Multi-party covert communication with steganography and quantum secret sharing

In this paper, we address the "multi-party covert communication", a stronger notion of security than standard secure multi-party communication. Multi-party covert communication guarantees that the process of it cannot be observed. We propose a scheme for steganographic communication based on a channel hidden within quantum secret sharing (QSS). According to our knowledge nobody has ever raised the scheme, providing us the motivation for this work. To an outside observer, participants will engage in a typical instance of QSS, just like the others. But when the session is over, covert multi-party communication has already been done. Further analysis shows that the amount of hidden information one can acquire is 0, even if either an outside observer guesses the covert communication is carrying on or a dishonest participant is eavesdropping. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.