Quantum hashing and fingerprinting for quantum cryptography and computations

Abstract

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020. Fingerprinting and cryptographic hashing have quite different usages in computer science, but have similar properties. Interpretation of their properties is determined by the area of their usage: fingerprinting methods are methods for constructing efficient randomized and quantum algorithms for computational problems, while hashing methods are one of the central cryptographic primitives. Fingerprinting and hashing methods are being developed from the mid of the previous century, while quantum fingerprinting and quantum hashing have a short history. In the paper we present computational aspects of quantum fingerprinting, discuss cryptographic properties of quantum hashing. We investigate the pre-image resistance of this function and show that it reveals only O(1) bits of information about the input.