{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,12]],"date-time":"2025-10-12T00:27:58Z","timestamp":1760228878280,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":39,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"11","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,5,25]],"date-time":"2022-05-25T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1653436800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100004826","name":"Beijing Natural Science Foundation","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["4222016","D040301"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["4222016","D040301"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100004826","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Civil Space Project of China","award":["4222016","D040301"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["4222016","D040301"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>In existing cryptographic key distribution (CKD) protocols based on computational ghost imaging (CGI), the interaction among multiple legitimate users is generally neglected, and the channel noise has a serious impact on the performance. To overcome these shortcomings, we propose a multi-party interactive CKD protocol over a public network, which takes advantage of the cascade ablation of fragment patterns (FPs). The server splits a quick-response (QR) code image into multiple FPs and embeds different \u201cwatermark\u201d labels into these FPs. By using a CGI setup, the server will acquire a series of bucket value sequences with respect to different FPs and send them to multiple legitimate users through a public network. The users reconstruct the FPs and determine whether there is an attack in the public channel according to the content of the recovered \u201cwatermark\u201d labels, so as to complete the self-authentication. Finally, these users can extract their cryptographic keys by scanning the QR code (the cascade ablation result of FPs) returned by an intermediary. Both simulation and experimental results have verified the feasibility of this protocol. The impacts of different attacks and the noise robustness have also been investigated.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s22113994","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,5,25]],"date-time":"2022-05-25T08:41:33Z","timestamp":1653468093000},"page":"3994","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["Multi-Party Cryptographic Key Distribution Protocol over a Public Network Based on a Quick-Response Code"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"22","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9481-2389","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Wen-Kai","family":"Yu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Quantum Technology Research, School of Physics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China"},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Advanced Optoelectronic Quantum Architecture and Measurement of Ministry of Education, School of Physics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Ying","family":"Yang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Quantum Technology Research, School of Physics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China"},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Advanced Optoelectronic Quantum Architecture and Measurement of Ministry of Education, School of Physics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Ya-Xin","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Quantum Technology Research, School of Physics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China"},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Advanced Optoelectronic Quantum Architecture and Measurement of Ministry of Education, School of Physics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Ning","family":"Wei","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Quantum Technology Research, School of Physics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China"},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Advanced Optoelectronic Quantum Architecture and Measurement of Ministry of Education, School of Physics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Shuo-Fei","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Center for Quantum Technology Research, School of Physics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China"},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Advanced Optoelectronic Quantum Architecture and Measurement of Ministry of Education, School of Physics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,5,25]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"767","DOI":"10.1364\/OL.20.000767","article-title":"Optical image encryption based on input plane and Fourier plane random encoding","volume":"20","author":"Refregier","year":"1995","journal-title":"Opt. 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