The Trouble with Quantum Bit Commitment

Abstract

In a recent paper, Lo and Chau explain how to break a family of quantum bit commitment schemes, and they claim that their attack applies to the 1993 protocol of Brassard, Crépeau, Jozsa and Langlois (BCJL). The intuition behind their attack is correct, and indeed they expose a weakness common to all proposals of a certain kind, but the BCJL protocol does not fall in this category. Nevertheless, it is true that the BCJL protocol is insecure, but the required attack and proof are more subtle. Here we provide the first complete proof that the BCJL protocol is insecure.