arXiv:2604.26413quant-phcs.AI2026-04

用量子电路生成密钥,四重绑定确保图像隐写信息只能在完整条件下方可解密。

Quantum Gatekeeper: Multi-Factor Context-Bound Image Steganography with VQC Based Key Derivation on Quantum Hardware

论文配图:Quantum Gatekeeper: Multi-Factor Context-Bound Image Steganography with VQC Based Key Derivation on Quantum Hardware
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 基于变分量子电路生成门控密钥,参数由哈希扩展和上下文特征决定。
  • 需密码、共享密钥、上下文字符串与参考图签名全部匹配才可提取信息。
  • 支持文本与图像嵌入,可在量子硬件上验证噪声下的稳定性能。

本文提出 Quantum Gatekeeper,一种上下文绑定的图像隐写框架,成功恢复载荷需同时满足密码学解密与精确提取路径重建。系统融合无损最低有效位嵌入、确定性变分量子电路(VQC)生成的门控密钥、多因素上下文绑定及认证加密。载荷提取依赖四个必要条件:密码、共享密钥、用户提供的上下文字符串与参考图像签名。任一因素偏差将导致读取错误像素序列或认证失败,触发静默拒绝而非部分泄露。密钥通过种子驱动的变分电路生成,参数经密码哈希扩展与上下文相关图像特征决定。为保证编码/解码一致性,密钥路径通过精确态矢量仿真生成;同时使用IBM超导量子硬件评估电路家族在物理噪声下的统计行为。引入双区域图像布局,分离头信息与载荷信息的恢复,各自采用独立密钥。实验表明,在正确条件下可实现PNG图像上端到端消息嵌入与恢复,且结果具有确定性;在图像嵌套配置中,秘密图像在嵌入前被缩放至固定分辨率,实现像素级精准恢复。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

This paper presents Quantum Gatekeeper, a context-bound image steganography framework where successful payload recovery depends on both cryptographic decryption and the reconstruction of a precise extraction path. The system integrates lossless least significant bit (LSB) embedding with a deterministic variational quantum circuit (VQC)-derived gate key, multi-factor contextual binding, and authenticated encryption. Payload extraction is contingent upon four requisite factors: a password, a shared secret, a user-supplied context string, and a reference image signature. Any deviation in these factors causes the system to read from an incorrect pixel sequence or fail authentication, resulting in silent rejection rather than partial disclosure. The proposed method derives a gatecontrolled extraction key from a seed-conditioned variational circuit, with parameters generated via cryptographic hash expansion and context-dependent image features. To ensure encode/decode consistency, the cryptographic key path is generated via exact statevector simulation; concurrently, IBM superconducting quantum hardware is utilized to evaluate the statistical behavior of the circuit family under physical noise. We introduce a dual-region image layout to resolve the nonce bootstrapping dependency, separating header recovery from payload recovery through independently derived keys. Experimental results confirm successful end-to-end message embedding and recovery on PNG images, demonstrating deterministic success under correct conditions and failure otherwise. The framework supports both text and image payloads; in the image-in-image configuration, a secret image is resized to a fixed resolution prior to embedding, enabling exact pixel-level recovery under correct contextual reconstruction.

隐写术量子加密多因子认证图像安全

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