Abstract: The substrings of a bit-string can be regarded as binary numbers on which a digit-sum operation is defined. By comparing the digit-sums of the two substrings, one can locate and correct the error in his substring. The efficiency of our new protocol is much higher than those of all known information reconciliation protocols even in the worst case, and simultaneously, its information leakage is relatively small.

Key words: unconditional security, secret-key agreement, information reconciliation, digit-sum