Multi-party interactive cryptographic key distribution protocol over a public network based on computational ghost imaging

In existing ghost-imaging-based cryptographic key distribution (CKD) protocols, the lack of joint identity authentication leads to potential security risks. Here, under a computational ghost imaging framework, we propose a multi-party interactive CKD protocol over a public network, which sets an intermediary to perform fragment-synthesis-based joint identity authentication. The fragment images can be acquired with high quality via a binarization process. Both simulation and experiments have demonstrated that this proposed protocol can greatly improve the security of communication. Thus, this protocol paves a new way for authentication in multi-party CKD.