  Quantum Internet signifies a remarkable advancement in communication
technology, harnessing the principles of quantum entanglement and superposition
to facilitate unparalleled levels of security and efficient computations.
Quantum communication can be achieved through the utilization of quantum
entanglement. Through the exchange of entangled pairs between two entities,
quantum communication becomes feasible, enabled by the process of quantum
teleportation. Given the lossy nature of the channels and the exponential
decoherence of the transmitted photons, a set of intermediate nodes can serve
as quantum repeaters to perform entanglement swapping and directly entangle two
distant nodes. Such quantum repeaters may be malicious and by setting up
malicious entanglements, intermediate nodes can jeopardize the confidentiality
of the quantum information exchanged between the two communication nodes.
Hence, this paper proposes a quantum identity authentication protocol that
protects quantum networks from malicious entanglements. Unlike the existing
protocols, the proposed quantum authentication protocol does not require
periodic refreshments of the shared secret keys. Simulation results demonstrate
that the proposed protocol can detect malicious entanglements with a 100%
probability after an average of 4 authentication rounds.
