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A multiparty controlled bidirectional quantum secure direct communication and authentication protocol is pro-posed based on EPR pair and entanglement swapping. The legitimate identities of communicating parties are encoded to Bell states which act as a detection sequence. Secret messages are transmitted by using the classical XOR operation, which serves as a one-time-pad. No photon with secret information transmits in the quantum channel. Compared with the protocols proposed by Wang et al. [Acta Phys. Sin. 56 (2007) 673; Opt. Commun. 266 (2006) 732], the protocol in this study implements bidirectional communication and authentication, which defends most attacks including the 'man-in-the-middle' attack efficiently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent work [Quantum Inf. Process 12 (2013) 1077], a multi-user protocol of quantum private comparison of equality (QPCE) is presented. Here we point out that if we relax the constraint of a semi-honest third party, the private information of the users will be totally leaked out to the third party. A special attack is demonstrated in detail. Furthermore, a possible improvement is proposed, which makes the protocol secure against this kind of attack. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]