Single-Photon LED: Key To Uncrackable Encryption?

nut writes: "The BBC are carrying this story of new type of LED so precise that it can emit just one photon of light each time it is switched on. It has been developed by scientists from Toshiba Research Limited and the University of Cambridge. It is described in the journal Science, although I can find no mention of it on their website. One of the applications of this is supposedly uncrackable encryption, due to the law of indeterminacy. This application is described fully in 'The Code Book', by Simon Singh, although the method was only theoretical at the time the book was first published."

Comments

frost pist

[Super Mario Troll]

sung to the tune of Day-O
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Re:frost pist

[ArchieBunker]

Now all we need of Isaac Hayes to sing this.

Re:frost pist

[The Turd Report]

I like it. It has a funky beat and I can troll to it.

Re:frost pist

[Super Mario Troll]

High praise... I have always enjoyed The Turd Report.

Want to get to know the Super Mario Troll better? Read my bio!!

Re:frost pist

[Fecal Troll Matter]

Beetleguise, Beetleguise, Beetleguise!

First Posts

[sneakybilly]

Do people who get first posts even read the article? mmmmm I know I didn't just wanted to get in the top ten :)

Re:First Posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. But only if it doesn't make the front page.

Or they saw the article on another site and just noticed it on slashdot.

But generally, if it makes it to the front page, the first post will invariably be crap. ;)

Re:First Posts

[jaavaaguru]

mmmmm I know I didn't just wanted to get in the top ten

Do the people who get first posts ever use correct grammar and punctuation? the phrase "I didn't just wanted" does not make sense. Perhaps you missed a comma?

And back to the topic on hand...

The laws of quantum mechanics dictate that it provides a way to guarantee that no-one has intercepted that key

Cool. That's half the insecurity problem solved. Or is it? In cryptography are most breaches caused by keys not being kept secure, or by algorithms being cracked?
When DES was released, didnt they say it would never be cracked? Well look what happened there. In fact, it's been done several times now.

Never say Never.

But it may still be hackable

[os2fan]

Consider these issues:

1. The line can still be hacked, because it is possible to put a TEE into the circuit, just as long as STDOUT looks like STDIN.
2. It may be possible to hack elsewhere, al la Magic Lanten.
3. It would be very succeptable to stray photons, including those made by quantum effects...

Or am I wrong....

Re:But it may still be hackable

[CoolVibe]

You forgot another tacktic: replay attacks.

Re:But it may still be hackable

[Jon Howard]

The only way to make the output look the same as the input (for a man-in-the-middle attack) would be to break the entanglement of the source photons, read the data, and entangle the output photon with the source photons. Currently there is no known or theoretical technique to accomplish this task, but I may be missing something.

Re:But it may still be hackable

[mbessey]

Replay attacks are a protocol problem, and are best handled at that level, with timestamps, for instance.

Quantum Cryptography is all about protecting against undetected interception of your signal. If the detection problem gets solved, this could be a real revolution in the security of communication links.

-Mark

Re:But it may still be hackable

[waitdyahoo.com]

Well that is what I don't understand as I read the article, it says that intercepting the proten would cause the properties of it to change..

But they also say they have no way of reading the value. Is that because they are modifying the value of the proton when they try to read it?

Vaperware anyone?

Re:But it may still be hackable

[Anonymous Coward]

1. The line can still be hacked, because it is possible to put a TEE into the circuit, just as long as STDOUT looks like STDIN.

Actually, if the predictions of quantum mechanics are correct, this is not possible.

The way that this works is not intuitive at all, so don't worry if you don't understand it. Einstein, Podalsky, and Rosen published a famous paper showing that quantum mechanics necessarily leads to these kind of effects.

Their goal was actually to show that quantum mechanics was unacceptable as a physical theory because they did not believe nature could possibly behave this way. But as far as we can tell, nature really does work in these mysterious ways.

Re:But it may still be hackable

[CoolVibe]

Timestamps have one fundamental problem: they are predictable. It might stop a replay attack, but not cryptoanalysis.

But just a thought, if attempts are made to make the signal "undetectable", isn't that falling into the 'security through obscurity' trap?

I find the assumption of "unbreakable crypto" a bit overzealous. Every crypto scheme can be cracked, only the time you have to invest in it seems to keep growing, and things seem to get more and more complex. The reason people feel save with high grade conventional crypto (thru PKI or be it symmetrical) is that it takes a *very* long time (as in hopefully centuries) to recover the message.

AFAIK, there is only one scheme that comes close to perfect, and that's the one time pad using a (dare I say) random "key" (say, a CD-R recorded with just white noise picked up from radio traffic or stellar background noise). If the "key" is handled in a secure manner, it's virtually unbeatable. Of course there is one VERY weak factor here, and that's the human factor, but still... Oh ironic is that the one time pad system is also the most simple one :-)

Re:But it may still be hackable

[Cramer]

As I understand it, you cannot entangle a photon. At any rate, you cannot entangle one of anything -- it's entangled with what? Now a quantum entangled photon emitter... that's a toy! Your "key" becomes one certified photon from said emitter. (Give it a few decades and there would be a quantum photomultiplier rendering the whole mess about as useful as DES.)

Quantum physics dreams up a lot of stuff that exists only on paper. And even after we figure out how to get it off the paper, we cannot figure out how to get any functional utility from it.

Re:But it may still be hackable

[Grax]

isn't that falling into the 'security through obscurity' trap?

Obscurity is a useful tool. It should never be relied on as a sole defence but then neither should any other security tactic. It should definitely be part of a security admin's arsenal though.

If you disagree then please post your /etc/password and /etc/shadow files for our review.

no christmas lights

[Zep1]

That wouldn't do much for lighting your christmas tree

Second post

[Anonymous Coward]

#eet

Glowing

[Renraku]

If you had an entire array of these single-photon lights, couldn't it add an eerie glow to an object? Hopefully we can nanoscale these LED's and make things glow eerily.

Re:Glowing

[enneff]

There is absolutely no way, even if you had a MASSIVE array of them, that you could observe the light emitted by these LEDs with the naked eye. A standard LED emits many millions upon millions of photons every second, whilst these only emit a single one.

Re:Glowing

[QuMa]

Actually, under the right circumstances the human eye can detect a single photon. However, due to the preprocessing done by the brain this signal doesn't actually reach any conscious part of your brain (for lack of better terms). But you don't need that many photon's, 10 or 20 should be perfectly detectable under the right circumstances.

Re:Glowing

[Anonymous Coward]

Fascinating. Do you know exactly what radioactive elements we can see flash faintly?

Re:Glowing

[Cramer]

Additionally, the density of photoreceptors in the human eye is too low to reliablly detect one stray photon. However, if the photo hits a receptor, it'll fire.

As an aside, photons aren't the only thing that will fire a human photoreceptor...

Re:Glowing

[Hittite Creosote]

You wouldn't use these LEDs to make things appear to glow, as making a multiple photon emitting LED is far easier than making one that only emits one photon at a time.

LED Uses

[sneakybilly]

So I guess these things aren't for flash lights :)

Re:LED Uses

[Anonymous Coward]

just about as bright as the elected officials when it come to technology...

Re:LED Uses

[tamboril]

depends on how you define 'flash'

Question

[cscx]

I *know* it's an LED, but the question is, can you run Linux on it?

Important information about LEDs!

[The WIPO Troll]

THE OFFICIAL TACO-SNOTTING FAQ By The WIPO Troll, $Revision: 1.12 $

Why have I been receiving emails from CmdrTaco, in which he seems to be speaking in some kind of code language?

Whenever Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda gets bored (and who wouldn't, running a site like Slashdot all day), he roams through the Slashdot database, penis in hand, looking for people who might enjoy engaging in homosexual orgies with him. How he determines this is anyone's guess; but if you have a homosexual-sounding nickname, or a nick with the letter P in it, you're in trouble.

So this time, he found you. Lucky you.

CmdrTaco's code language is relatively easy to decipher. He prefers to speak in thinly-veiled sexual innuendo to evade the watchful (but relatively stupid) eye of Slashdot's parent corporation, VA Software. CmdrTaco's "Commander" is, of course, his penis -- a small, withered little thing that lives in his pants that only comes out in the presence of other men or at the beck and call of CmdrTaco's own right hand. His "Taco bells" are the shriveled testes that droop beneath his Commander, and his "Taco sauce" is his, well, jizz. It should be more than obvious to you now what he means when he asks you to "ring his Taco bells" or "taste his gourmet Taco sauce."

Lastly, there is a practice he refers to as "Taco-snotting" and the more shocking "circle-snot."

Good Lord. What is "Taco-snotting?"

"Taco-snotting" is the term used by CmdrTaco to refer to the practice of sucking the penis of a homosexual man (or unwilling heterosexual; CmdrTaco is rumored to prefer rape), then blowing the semen out his nose onto his partner's (victim's) face and body. A long, bubbly stream of milky-white semen is left on CmdrTaco's face, dribbling out of his nose and down his cheek: hence the term, "Taco-snotting."

A "circle-snot" is a Taco-snotting circle-jerk, another practice common among the Slashdot crew. CmdrTaco, CowboiKneel, and Homos get together and Taco-snot each other with their gooey, sticky cum -- spooging their jizz-snot all over each other's faces and pasty, white bodies, until they're covered head to toe with each other's man juice. This can go on for hours. For the homosexual penetration that follows this lengthy foreplay, Roblowme is usually there to provide plenty of anal lubricant; he owns a limo service and has ample supplies of motor oil and axle grease ready to go.

To complete this perverted orgy, fellow geeks Michael, Timothy, and Jamie will usually join in, dressed in tight leather mock-S.S. uniforms, jack boots, and leather gloves. The whole group then proceeds to snot each other's spunk and whip each other's pudgy asses with riding crops and chains until their pale, white geek bodies are exhausted and soaked in stinking sweat from the hours of passionate, homosexual revelry.

Ewwwwww. So, can I stop receiving these emails?

Hopefully.

You most likely forgot to uncheck the "Willing to Taco-snot" checkbox in your account preferences. CmdrTaco has probably already got the hots for your wad, and he's probably already been lurking outside your bathroom window for weeks with a camera, some tissues and lube. There's no escaping a geek in heat, so it's probably too late for you, but you can possibly rectify this situation. To remove yourself from CmdrTaco's sights, log into your Slashdot account, go to your user page, click on Messages, and uncheck the box next to "Willing to Taco-snot." Maybe he'll ignore you. Probably not.

I can't stop receiving these emails from CmdrTaco!?

If you indulge him in a Taco-snot or two, he might leave you alone. You might also want to look into mail filtering, restraining orders, or purchasing a heavy, blunt object capable of warding off rampaging homosexual geeks in heat. Trust me, when they charge... oh, the humanity. If he gets you, and you let him Taco-snot you, you will most likely end up tied up in his basement to be used as his sex slave for the rest of your life (or until he accidentally drowns you in spunk in a circle-snot).

Have you ever been Taco-Snotted?

Unfortunately, yes. I first met CmdrTaco at an Open Source Convention. He invited me back to his room for a game of Quake and some "gourmet Tacos," but when I got there, he jumped me and tied me to his bed, stripping me. After taking his "Commander" out of his pants, Mr. Taco made me suck the withered thing six times. He then performed his vile Taco-snotting ritual on me three times over the next two hours, bringing me to orgasm after sweaty, mind-numbing orgasm... then he snotted my own milky-white jizz back onto my face, into my mouth, then again on my exposed belly.

CmdrTaco invited several of his Open Source (or rather, "Open Sauce" -- man sauce) buddies over to continue the twisted snotfest. Linux Torvalds raped my ass with his "monolithic kernel," and Anal Cox used his "network stack" in a multitude of unspeakable ways on and in every orifice in my defenseless body. Michael was there in his leather Nazi uniform, caning my ass with a bamboo pole and ranting about "all those Censorware freaks out to get him."

How did you finally escape, you ask? After about 16 hours of countless homosexual atrocities perpetrated against my restrained body, they all finally went to sleep on top of me, sweat-soaked and exhausted. I was left there, covered in bubbly, translucent jizz-snot, chained to the bed, with half a dozen fat, pasty-white fags lying around and on top of me. Fortunately the spooge coating my flesh worked wonderfully as a lubricant; I was able to squirm my way out of the handcuffs and slip out the back door. I'm just glad I survived the ordeal. These geeks had a lot of built-up spunk in their wads -- I could've easily been drowned!

That's horrible. Does "Taco-snotting" have anything to do with CmdrTaco's "special taco"?

No, that's a different disgusting perversion CmdrTaco indulges himself in. CmdrTaco is usually not satisfied with merely snotting your own jizz back onto your face, he most often enjoys involving his own bodily fluids in his twisted games. WeatherTroll has spent some time trying to educate the Slashdot readership about this vile practice (emphasis added):

You may be wondering what CmdrTaco's "special taco" is. You will be wishing that you hadn't been wondering after you finish reading this post. To make his "special taco", CmdrTaco takes a taco shell and shits on it. He then adds lettuce, jacks off on the taco, and adds a compound to make the person who eats the taco unconscious. Of course, the compound does not make the person unconscious until the taco is fully eaten. Thus CmdrTaco force-feeds the taco to the unsuspecting victim.

After the victim is unconscious, he is held against his will and used for CmdrTaco's nefarious sexual purposes. This includes shoving taco shells up the victim's ass, Taco-snotting, and getting Jon Katz involved.

Completely different, yet no less revolting. It should be clear to you now that CmdrTaco is a very, very sick individual, as are most of the Slashdot editors.

Does Jon Katz get involved in any of this? I thought he was a paedophile, not a homosexual.

Actually, Jon Katz is a homosexual paedophile. He's also a coprophiliac, and, many suspect, a zoophile. Jon Katz is somewhat of a loner and doesn't involve himself in circle-snots. Mr. Katz usually engages in a game called " Katz juicy-douching" with his harem of little-boy slaves: a vile practice which involves administering an enema to himself of the little boy's urine (forced out of them with a pair of pliers), spooging the vile muck from his ass back into the enema bag, then squirting and slathering the goo all over himself, and the little boy's chained-up and naked bodies. If he's in the mood, he will sometimes skip refilling the enema bag and just squirt it from his ass onto his boys. Unwilling boys are further tortured with the pliers until they comply and allow Mr. Katz to juicy-douche them for the rest of their lives.

As I already said, Mr. Katz is also a zoophile. As if the sexual escapades with the helpless little boys aren't enough, Jon usually enjoys his juicy-douches best when his penis is firmly planted in a female goat's anus. He is also rumoured to get off on watching his little boys eat the goat's small, bean-like turds.

...Are you getting hard writing this?

Why, yes. :) Join me in a WIPO-snot?

No, thanks. I'm already CmdrTaco's boi toi.

________________________________________
READER COMMENTS

1. Fucking hilarious too bad it didnt get a 5:Funny (Score:-1, Offtopic)
   by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.02 19:01 (#2644105)
   
   this is good shit man

2. Re:Taco-snotting@Home! (Score:-1, Offtopic)
   by Dark_Cobra87 on 2001.12.01 23:03 (#2642180)
   
   Oops, forgot to check that Taco-snot option...

3. Re:Fuck Linux! Fuck him hard! (Score:-1)
   by Fecal Troll Matter on 2001.12.01 20:55 (#2641791)
   
   Mmmmmmm, Taco Sauce...
   
   Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)

4. Look (Score:-1)
   by ArchieBunker on 2001.12.01 20:19 (#2641679)
   
   I love trolling but this shit is getting old, fast. At least start mixing them up a little bit. How about the 'How OSM was Freed' series?
   http://www.naawp.org/

5. Re:Congratulations! You have been WIPO'd!! (Score:0)
   by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.01 8:37 (#2640602)
   
   Stop posting this! I've got hangover and Taco Snotting doesn't make me feel any better.
   
   I'm really glad that Taco Snotting is illegal here in Europe.

6. Re:Snot me baby, one more time! (Score:0)
   by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.30 1:01 (#2634213)
   
   Get a life you loser! Don't you have anything better to do than insult CmdrTaco and the gay community? We are not perverts, we are human beings just like you. So give it a rest!

7. Re:Hello, perdida!!! Won't you snot my face tonigh (Score:-1)
   by perdida on on 2001.11.27 14:13 (#2618764)
   
   Shut up you asshole.
   
   I am not great, I am merely adequate. I live in adequacy.

8. Go back to Russia. (Score:0)
   by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.26 22:22 (#2616035)
   
   You weiner trool!

9. Re:The Taco-Snotting FAQ Rides Again!! (Updated so (Score:0)
   by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.25 9:14 (#2609574)
   
   try to find a pic of actual "taco-snotting"! fucking funny it would be! so go to gay porn sites day in and day out until you find a man giving another man a blowjob that has jizz coming out of his nose and mouth. by the way, keep up the good work

10. Re:Snotting another first!! (Score:0)
    by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.23 12:18 (#2603370)
    
    WIPO, this is getting waaaay old, either drop it or revise it.... there've been no updates for days now...
    
    CmdrTaco

11. Re:It's Taco SPAM!!! (Score:0)
    by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.22 17:28 (#2600815)
    
    A truly excellent and very humourous troll indeed!
    However...
    
    To complete this perverted orgy, fellow geeks Michael, Timothy, and Jamie often join in, dressed in black Gestapo uniforms, jack boots, and leather gloves.
    
    Black GeStaPo uniforms? The GeStaPo (Geheime Staatspolizei - Secret State Police) wore civilian clothes (although there are reports on them occasionally using Allgemeine SS uniforms in occupied territories).
    
    I seriously doubt that perverted individuals like CmdrTaco et al would have the good taste to ever wear the outstandingly beautiful black Waffen SS uniforms! Please update the FAQ accordingly.
    • Re:It's Taco SPAM!!! (Score:0)
      by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.23 4:06 (#2602610)
      
      Actually, it appears you are both wrong!! Ah ha!! I think our boy WIPO was thinking of the Allgemeine SS uniforms. Waffen SS were grey.

12. Re:Microsoft's Taco-Snotting Connection (Score:-1, Troll)
    by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.21 4:49 (#2594325)
    
    oh yeah, you say you have masturbated only 2 times to this post. well, by the time it takes for me to get through reading it, i usually end up masturbated 5 to 6 times, 10 to 12 if i have the goatse.cx homepage loaded up and am looking at it side by side with the slashdot page. my keyboard, hands, mouse, monitor, the underside of my desk and around the floor under my desk are cum soaked and sticky with the man smell i know and love.

13. Re:Microsoft's Taco-Snotting Connection (Score:0)
    by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.21 4:41 (#2594311)
    
    for version 2 you should make a total re-write of the cod...errr...text and add some details about cmdrtaco and the homo-gang's happenings with their coworkers (osdn?) and all of the gay revelry they enjoy and promote. by the way, did i just see cmdrtaco on television promoting the nax hair removal system? i guess after using vaseline in and around his ass he grew quite a ponytail and it had to be removed somehow...ouch!

14. Re:Microsoft's Taco-Snotting Connection (Score:-1, Troll)
    by TRoLLaXoR on 2001.11.21 3:59 (#2594191)
    
    WIPO, do you notice how few comments you get for anything you write/post/spam nowadays?
    
    -Trollaxor

15. Jon-Katz docking (Score:-1)
    by sales_worldwide on 2001.11.20 11:53 (#2588488)
    
    You forgot to mention Jon Katz's "docking" games, where he places his chopper head to head with another chap, and rolls the other guys foreskin over his own circumcised end ("docking"), providing him with fantasies of actually having his own forskin ...
    "Making linux GPL was the best thing I ever did" - Torvalds. I'd hate to see the worst thing...

16. Re:Snotting a first! (Score:-1)
    by Fucky the troll on 2001.11.20 11:28 (#2588446)
    
    Woah! When did the WIPO troll get freed? And how the fuck did I miss it?
    
    Excellent FP, sir.
    
    This is a sig virus. Please put me in your sig

17. Re:Snotting a first! (Score:-1, Troll)
    by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.20 11:04 (#2588407)
    
    omg that is crapflooding material if i ever saw it!!!!!! and u got a first post!!!! whoot to the wipo troll!!!

18. GW, please.... (Score:0)
    by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.19 9:03 (#2583756)
    
    GW...you know we love every hair on your 27 acre ass... and I, for one, would never do anything untowards your graceful demeanor. And you probably have several friends that would love to help you do the bear dance all over my face if I so much as spelled your name wrong. And you know I'd defend your Constitutional right to defame God in heaven. I'd even help fund your education, should you ever decide to take that route. Hell, I'd buy you a tall tepid bear-whiz beer if you were here with me, right now!
    
    But. ...if you can't find another topic, I'm gonna step over your dead mother's grave and kick your assuredly anesthetitized butt clear across the playground.
    
    Now go stick your shaved head back down inside the woman's toilet, and just to show there's no hard feelings, I'll jump in the tow-truck and drive right over to help you pull it right out...ok?
    
    thanks

19. Re:Help me Taco-Snotters!! (Score:-1)
    by mark knopfler 69 on 2001.11.19 8:25 (#2583695)
    
    I DO NOT BELIEVE YOU SIR. FOR ONE THING, THE E-MAIL FROM CMDRTACO DOES NOT HAVE ENOUGH GRAMMATICAL AND SPELLING MISTAKES. Let's be realistic here, CmdrTaco usually types with one hand, and since he is shaking from jacking off his aim on the keyboard isn't too good. Those e-mails were a little too well written. Sorry boy, you'll have to do better.

20. Re: What the hell is "taco snotting"? (Score:-1)
    by WeatherTroll on 2001.11.19 8:14 (#2583667)
    
    You should update this to say VA Software instead of VA Linux.

21. YOU ARE WINNER (Score:1)
    by smackmonkey on 2001.11.19 7:06 (#2583510)
    
    Crackhead moderators: this is +5, Hilarious material.
    
    --
    CNN declares War on Islam!
    Left-wing America declares War on its Civil Liberties!

22. Re:On Taco-Snotting 1.9 (Score:0)
    by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.19 5:40 (#2583336)
    
    This was funny the first 100 times. Now it is getting boring!

23. Digusting and Shameful (Score:-1)
    by egg troll on 2001.11.18 22:27 (#2582054)
    
    Having masturbated *twice* to this post, I'm still incredibly aroused! Come over for a Taco Snot. I'll be wearing my crotchless Clifford the Big Red Dog outfit!!
    
    For more info check out this /. article

24. IMPROVE THE FAQ (Score:-1, Flamebait)
    by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.18 12:03 (#2580822)
    
    add more links to goatse and to cowboineal's site to make it better. a link to rotten.com would be nice too
    • Re:IMPROVE THE FAQ (Score:0)
      by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.18 12:18 (#2580832)
      
      and a link to michael's site and to jon katz's site if he has one and homo's site. i dont know what else to say. maybe a few links to phallic.org they have nice penis pictures! a link to the planet quake site or whatever. really make the reader feel this faq really answers their questions. oh yeah, and when you talk about cmdrtaco snotting you, say he brought you to "orgasm after sweaty orgasm". describe it more is all i'm saying. and use more italics and bolding! and when you talk about jon katz shitting or whatever have a link to fecal japan on rotten.com
      
      other wise a great job wipo troll! keep up the good work!

25. Re:CmdrTaco's filthy secret! (Score:-1)
    by Wil Wheaton on 2001.11.18 6:41 (#2580438)
    
    Hi. Let's be buddies.. butt buddies.
    --
    WIL WHEATON DOT NET

26. WIPO speaks the truth (Score:-1)
    by dead_puppy on 2001.11.18 5:33 (#2580342)
    
    Here is an e-mail I received a week ago:
    
    From: malda@slashdot.org
    To: puppy_dead@hotmail.com
    Subject: were where you last friday? :(
    
    I thought we where supposed to meet at Backdoor's at 8-ish, sugar-lips? You could've at least told me that you could'nt make it! I was even in my favorite pink skirt for you, honey-cup... next time, you could be more considarite and tell me you cant come... bastard.
    
    --
    CmdrTaco (malda@slashdot.org)
    
    You finding Ling-Ling's head?

27. Taco snotting is WRONG!!! (Score:-1)
    by Big_Ass_Spork on 2001.11.18 4:53 (#2580300)
    
    I do it wrong
    
    Laying here in the shadows of my room, I squint up at my love. My Ms. Portman. I am sore and tired after fucking her for eight solid hours. My chapped and aching dick is soaking in grits to relieve the pain. She gets on her knees and starts lapping the grits up out of the bowl. She places her beautiful hands on my penis and starts to lick the grits off my achy piece.
    
    Massaging my nutsack she....
    
    WAIT, I DO IT WRONG!!!!
    
    Yanking my dick out of her mouth I throw her to the ground and shove it in to her gaping freshly fisted ass. [goatse.cx]
    
    "OH BIG ASS SPORK!! Fuck my ass, fuck my ass good. DEEPER, my stallion, deeper!! Make a Beowulf cluster of sperm on my back!!"
    
    "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of this baby!"
    
    I DO IT WRONG!!!!
    
    ---
    All your Sporks are belong to Big_Ass_Spork! What you say?! All your Sporks are belo... forget it...

28. Rob Malda Dead at age 25! (Score:-1)
    by j0nkatz on 2001.11.17 22:54 (#2579596)
    
    I just heard some sad news on the radio -- famous queerbait Rob Malda was found dead in his Holland home this morning. The details were a bit hazy, but it seems that he drowned in jizz while Taco Snotting his friend Hemos. I'm sure everyone in the /. community will miss him -- even if you didn't enjoy his queer antics and boring ass website, there's no denying his contributions to the homosesual cultural development, particularly in the areas of Taco snotting. Truly an American icon.
    
    I wanna Open Source sex so it won't be worth a shit either.

29. TACO-SNOTTING is really Donkey-Punching (Score:-1, Troll)
    by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.15 6:38 (#2567601)
    
    No no no, the correct term for that is "donkey-punch". I have eye-witnessed this amazing eye-popping event demonstrated on unsuspecting hose-monsters by my frat brothers in the past.. . :-)

30. Re:the effect of knowlege laws... (Score:1)
    by AbsoluteRelativity on 2001.11.15 5:31 (#2567457)
    
    The WIPO Troll
    Slashdot and the Karma Lottery - News for uber monkeys, by uber monkeys.

31. Re:Taco-Snotting (Score:-1, Troll)
    by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.13 9:27 (#2557632)
    
    Oh, man that's just sick !

32. HOW DO I GET AN ANONYMOUS PROXY? (Score:-1, Troll)
    by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.13 9:03 (#2557604)
    
    TELL ME WHERE I CAN GET AN ANONYMOUS proxy please WIPO Troll. Maybe later i will join you in a snotting at my place. ;P

33. Re:Taco-Snottage!?!?!? (Score:-1, Offtopic)
    by vikool on 2001.11.13 7:43 (#2557495)
    
    what is this bull shit,i feel offened that some people feel so so senseless to post stuff like these esp when such a tragic incident has occured

34. Re:Taco-felching!! (Score:-1)
    by I.T.R.A.R.K. on 2001.11.11 22:38 (#2551890)
    
    Where the fuck do I sign up?!
    
    - I throw rocks at retarded kids
    
    "Adequacy.org: Where congenital stupidity is not an option, but a requirement."

35. Re:Taco-felching!! (Score:-1, Troll)
    by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.11 21:53 (#2551753)
    
    this shit is hilarious..keep up the good work.

36. Re:Taco-felching!! (Score:-1, Offtopic)
    by rockwood on 2001.11.11 21:49 (#2551746)
    
    OMG! That is the most disgusting thing I have ever heard! WHo in their right mind would sit down and waste the time to construct such a replusive story. I guess I'll be skipping lunch and dinner today.. and possibly tomorrow also. The game doesn't affect reality. Reality affects the game.

37. Re:Ban this! It's disgusting!! (Score:0)
    by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.11 14:43 (#2550701)
    
    dude, this is crap-flood material if i ever saw it.
    duuuuuuuuudddddddddddddeeeeeeeee.

38. Re:Taco-Snotting = HATE SPEECH (Score:-1, Flamebait)
    by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.11 8:16 (#2550266)
    
    horny_rob_6969@hotmail.com
    
    Ah, so that's what the alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.horny-rob newsgroup is about!

39. MOD THIS UP PLEASE!!! (Score:-1)
    by egg troll on 2001.11.11 5:34 (#2550024)
    
    +5, Arousing
    
    For more info check out this /. article

40. Re:Taco-Snotting = HATE SPEECH (Score:-1, Offtopic)
    by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.11 4:39 (#2549891)
    
    WINNER>

41. Re:Taco-Snotting = HATE SPEECH (Score:-1, Offtopic)
    by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.11 4:37 (#2549887)
    
    I love you. Why do you use your bitchslapped account, rather than signing up for a new account to post at +1 before getting bitchslapped by the censors here? I guess I should speak for myself, but I don't want to log out and lose all my slashdot customization properties, nor do I want to lose my 50 karma yet.

42. Re:On Taco-Snotting (Score:0)
    by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.09 9:19 (#2542412)
    
    you fucking rock! right down to the expanded cvs id!
    
    WIPO trolls > linux

________________________________________

• The URL of this document is http://slashdot.org/journal.pl? op=display &uid=267426 &id=2346.
• Previous revisions are maintained at http://slashdot.org/journal.pl? op=display &uid=308209.

$Id: tacosnotting.html,v 1.12 2001/12/02 20:07:02 wipo Exp $

uncrackable encryption or no, that's just cool

[anotherone]

All that I want to know is how exactly they know that it's only emitting one photon.

And as far as I can tell, this is only a silly little theory. So far they've figured out how to emit one photon, but they don't know how to read it. I'm sure that this is gonna be HUGE...

Re:uncrackable encryption or no, that's just cool

[os2fan]

You could {turning logic}, but it would be nearly as slow as Windows XP {MSCE bait}

Re:uncrackable encryption or no, that's just cool

[vinnythenose]

Dammit I blinked. Hey Bill reset the machine, let's try again, I'm sure I'll see it this time. Dammit, I keep blinking and missing the photon.

Re:uncrackable encryption or no, that's just cool

[Anonymous Coward]

They flick the switch really really fast. They supposedly have a guy who can turn the LED on and off so fast that only one photon is emitted. They take his word for it because no one can see him actually flip it.

Re:uncrackable encryption or no, that's just cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'm no MSCE but you're one hell of an unfunny asshole!

Security Loophole

[Anonymous Coward]

>>"That's a security loophole and our device is going to plug that,"

We have never heard that statement before.

One Time Pads and Quantum Entanglement

[Anonymous Coward]

The article is unfortunately a little light on details. The application of these devices seems to be for sharing key material for an OTP. Seems that it could be considerably more practical than the quantum entanglement of particles methods previously discussed.

Re:One Time Pads and Quantum Entanglement

[n6mod]

The article is unfortunately a little light on details

That's the worst pun I've read in a long time.

Bravo!

One is the lonliest photon

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad we have finally surpassed Bulgaria in photon emitting technology.

imagine

[Festering Leper]

a beowu... ahh nevermind

Great.

[autopr0n]

. First they build the Super-kamakamode[sic] that can detect a single photon, and now they have ablity to emit them one at a time to!

And that doesn't even get into their cool anime and hot women.

But seriously, this is going to require a bit of work before it's totally practical for mass usage, right now they would have to use a huge photomultiplier tube in order to actually sense a single photon. I think it'll be a while before CCD or CMOS light detection is that good...

Or hey, maybe we'll all go back to vacuum tube computers :P

Re:Great.

[fok]

They could use it with the single-atom-transistor and the single-slectron-memory and produce a single-IC-motherboard...

Grammar

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people always say, "The BBC are..."? The BBC is SINGLE organization and as a result the verb should be singular: is. This goes for any other organization you can think of as well: Microsoft, IBM, the federal government. "The BBC are" sounds so stupid. Stop the madness people.

Re:Grammar

[Anonymous Coward]

In British and Australian English the standard form for addressing an entity, such as the BBC, is as though it were plural. The BBC are... is thus the correct construct. Only is US English would "The BBC is..." be correct.

Re:Grammar

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, now I know, thanks! (Doesn't mean it isn't weird though)

Re:Grammar

[Anonymous Coward]

So that's why they say 'all your base are belong to us.'

Wiretapping is not a concern...

[mbessey]

The line can't be tapped, because if you intercept the photons, you can't re-create the signal. Read an article on Quatum Cryptography.

-Mark

Re:Wiretapping is not a concern...

[vinnythenose]

The only way I coudl think of off hand (and believe me, I'm no quantum mechanic) would be to do the intercepting on either end, either before the photon is sent, or after it is received. Presumably there would be circuitry somewhere that would be working with this. Unles everything transmitted in photons. (press a key, fires off a photon to keyboard, keyboard fires photons into computer, motherboard fires photons.. .etc, etc.)

Re:Wiretapping is not a concern...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, if you have access directly to the sender or the receiver, why bother with the encrypted message at all?

Re:Wiretapping is not a concern...

[Amazing Quantum Man]

and believe me, I'm no quantum mechanic

Darn it, that's disappointing, because I had a quantum that needed some repairing. Now, if I only knew where it is and where it's going, then I'd have something.

Re:Wiretapping is not a concern...

[Birdie-PL]

Not exactly. The line can be easily tapped but then you have problems with recreating the signal.
When using two orthogonal quantum states, the eavesdropper has 50% chance of recreating any given state, even assuming that it was fully destroyed.

Funny thing is that you do not have to measure a photon (thus collapsing its quantum state) to obtain some information. One of the most clever attack ideas was to entangle trasmitted photons with your own and take measurement after both parties exchanged information via public channel. It was proved only in '98 that a scheme developed in '84 by Bennett and Brassard (BB84) is secure to such attacks.
See my slides on quantum crypto for a high-level look at BB84 and other stuff related to quantum computing and its applications to cryptography.

Uncrackable?

[coolmdriver]

Isn't that what they say about every encryption method when it comes out?

Re:Uncrackable?

[epsalon]

But quantum crypto is proven to be uncrackable. Just like one-time-pad.

Re:Uncrackable?

[madenosine]

No, they say it is very hard to crack. Quantum encryption is backed by physics, not a complex algorithm.

Re:Uncrackable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quantum encryption is currently proven to be uncrackable.

For all we know, 50 to 100 years from some guy named Billy Jugglies will discover the super-unified theorem, which may or may not disprove quantum mechanics, but will probably enable the cracking of the uncrackable.

Either way, what good is quantum mechanics when nobody understands how to use email:

"Hey Bill, look at this. Someone sent me a screen saver. They say it is awesome. I'm gonna install it"

Computer: Are you sure you want to run 'MagicLantern.exe'?

YES!

Re:Uncrackable?

[bugg]

What's your definition of proven?

Considering quantum cryptography is still theory, and there have been no repeatable experiments that prove that cracking it is not possible, a more accurate statement would be "quantum cryptology, by today's understanding of quantum physics, would be uncrackable."

It's very hard to prove that something is not possible. Especially something that has only existed in theory.

Re:Uncrackable?

[Hittite Creosote]

Well yes QM is a theory, but so is Gravity. That doesn't mean apples are going to rise tomorrow. Anyway, the main point is not that the code is uncrackable, but that you cannot intercept the key without being given away. Being able to crack someones code is often not that useful if they immediately know you've cracked it.

New technology

[Dirtside]

Man, I wish we could just set our nation's resource distribution slider to 100% for technology for, like, a week. Then we'd have all this great new tech to mess around with!

Of course, we'd have to switch the slider back to 100% social for a couple weeks to quell the riots that resulted in a week of no police, social services, or law. But... nifty new toys!

Re:New technology

[Migelikor1]

Somebody has played WAAAAYY too much civilization or civ2. On that note, we should route our spare chariot units to Afghanistan, they're not much use now that we have stealth technology, but we might as well throw them onto troop transports.

Re:New technology

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHAHA.

Good idea! :)

Re:New technology

[DoorFrame]

Well, considering our current situation in Afganistan and the number of cities in the United States, I would switch the government of the US to Communism first (accepting the 5 or so years of anarchy since we're not a very religious people). This would allow us to better handle corruption and place us in a very strong military position. You won't need to to put the social slider to 100 if you can obtain through trade or conquest more luxury items. I hear Afghanistan is chock full of dies and gems. We'll be set.

Wanna trade world maps?

law of indeterminacy??

[ZeroConcept]

Are they referring to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle? What is the law of indeterminacy??

Re:law of indeterminacy??

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's one of those new laws being passed in the US congress right now.

Re:law of indeterminacy??

[_ph1ux_]

I was gunna publish a law - but I couldnt determine what it should be about.

Re:law of indeterminacy??

[karlm]

What is the sound of one photon clapping? (Read below about the double slit experiment if you don't get it.) I also put a little bit about the crypto applications at the bottom of this post.

Look up "Schrodinger's Cat" at everything2 or google. Prepare to have your head explode. It sounds like the physacists have been reading too much zen.

There are a few ways I like to explain it:
Q: does a tree falling in the forest make any sound if nobody's there to hear it?
A: The tree doesn't fall in the forest, but also doesn't not-fall in the forest if nobody's there to hear it.
It's almost as if God is lazy and doesn't figure out what's going on all over the universe until someone checks to see what happened. Most of the time, there's enough watching going on that things happen normally. However, if you set up experiments to be isoled and unobservable enough, strange things happen and you can catch God being lazy.

In the world of quantum, thing can be in a state of quantum superposition. Schrodinger made up a little story to explain the idea. Suppose you are about to keep things from disturbing a cat in a sealed box. And suppose you were able to isolate the Cat from observation. And suppose that you were to place a radioactive source in the box and a time and some poison, such that if the radioactive source underwent decay within a certain ammount of time, the poison would be released, killing the cat. Forget for the moment that we can only achieve this kind of isolation on very small scales.

Now, according to quatum mechanics, the cat's state of being alive or dead is entangled with the state of decay of the radioactive source. The really wierd thing is that the way things work in the quantum world, the radioactive source has both decayed and not decayed. It's a quantum supoerposition. Due to the entanglement, this means that the cat is both dead and not dead at the same time. Only when you observe the contents of the box does the superposition collapse into a definate state. So, as soon as you open the box and look at the cat it has either been hungry for the past hour or dead for the past hour. One second earlier, it has actually been both hungry and dead. It's really goofy. Supposedly Schrodinger later wished he had picked a better story, but now we're stuck with Schrodinger's demented story of a quantum entangled cat.

This is really how things work in the world of quantum... kinda.

The way Feignman (sp?) describes this phenomenon in his book "QED" is through a variation on the classic double slit experiment. In the double slit experiment, you have a monochromatic light source (all of the photons have the same wavelength), and a barrier with two slits in it. Due to the wave properties of all particles*, including photons, the "light waves" go through the split, and come out the other side as two sets of waves that create an interference pattern. In come places the waves line up and create double-bright spots, and other places the waves are 180 degrees out of phase and absolutely no light arrives. Suppose you were to try this experiment with single photon emitter instead of the continous light source, and throw in a way to make sure the photon goes through one of the two slits and is directed toward your photodetector. Obviously the photon goes through one slit or the other, not both. Unfortunately, in this case the obvious is wrong. If you put a photodetector at a point where the photons comming from the two slits cancel eachother out, you find that the single photon somehow goes through both slits simultaneously and cancels itself out! This is strange to say the least. Suppose then you decide to investigate further by taking a detector that will detect if a single particle has passed through it, but not block the single particle. Such detectors supposedly exist. You find that half the time the photon goes through the slit you're watching and half the time it goes through the other slit, bit it always arrives at the far detector. So, ths photon never arrives if you don't check which slit it went though, but if you check which slit it went though, it always arrives. The photon acts diferently when you watch it! I think the example makes more sense if it's described with an electron, since electrons can be attracted to the detector. Feignman may have actually used an electron is his example. It's been a few years since I read QED.

The standard way to interperet this whole thing is that the particle is in a superposition of going left and going right unless you force it to be in one state or the other by measuring it.

The whole crypto aspect comes in when you devise schemes where there are two ways of measuring something. If you measure in one way, you get the right answer, if you measure in the other way, you get complete garbage. The most practical way to do this is with the polarization of a single photon. If you send a photon in a calcite crystal, it takes one path if it's polarized along the crystal grain, and another path is it's polarised perpendicular ot the crystal grain. If the photon comes in polarized 45 degrees to the crystal grain, it has a 50% chance of comming out in either spot. You put a detector at each spot and see which way the photon came out in order to detect polarity. You use this to do secure key exchange in the following way: the sender randomly picks to send each photon polarized in one of four orientations (vertically, hozontally, and two ways diagonally.) For each photon, the reciever randomly decides to orient his detector rectilinearly or diagonally. After measuring each photon, the reciever tells the sender which of the two detector orientations he used. The sender then tells the reciever which of the two detector orientations should have been used. The correct orientation reads the polarization correctly, the wrong orientation is 45 degrees to the photon's polarization and spits out complete garbage. Since you can's split a photon, you need to measure it one way or the other, not both. After the sender and reciever have talked about the detector orientations, they know which bits were received correctly and use those bits as an encryption key (probably in something like a one-time pad). Note that an attacher can bug the line and observe the photons, but in doing so his calcite crystal ends up aligning the polrization of the photon to be consistant with the measurement. An attacker needs to keep transmitting bits to the reciever, but half the time he's reading garbage bits and re-transmitting garbage bits. The sender and reciever will notice when 25% of their key bits are incorrect and know that they're being snooped on.

* I had to calculate the wavelength of a flying golfball once (thank you MIT freshman physics). The wavelength of any particle is a constant times one over the momentum of the particle. A golf ball has a hell of a lot smaller wavelength than any observed photon, due to the extremely small ammount of momentum carried by any routinely occuring photon seen on Earth.

Re:law of indeterminacy??

[aqu4fiend]

You've made a couple of mistakes in your post. Although it's really cool to learn about Schrodinger's cat in freshman physics, once you get into the math of it, it's not quite as it seems. When physicists started examining quantum behaviour, they started with a certain frame of reference. Two very basic concepts in this frame of reference are the particle, and the wave. Light had been "proven" to be a wave phenomenon many years earlier by refraction experiments. However, all attempts to detect the medium through which it moved were in vain (see esp. Michelson & Morley). Einstein's work on the photoelectric effect (which earned him his Nobel Prize) "proved" that light was a particle phenomenon - light was composed of photons. The sometimes-particle-sometimes-wave nature of light is referred to as particle wave duality. Duality was also observed in other seemingly self-contradictory experiments (e.g. the oft-quoted double slit experiment).
&nbsp

In introductory physics, this is where they tell you that light is a particle and a wave, then about Schrodingers Cat, and about Heisenberg uncertainty (the more exactly you know the position of a particle, the less exactly you know its momentum, and analogous relationships with wavelength, etc).
&nbsp

Wow!, say all the young physics students. The world is inherently unknowable! Take /that/, determinists!
&nbsp

Sadly, the young physics students do not understand. The paradoxes "explained" by the above arise from the fact that a photon is /not/ a particle. It is also /not/ a wave. It's something else. But it's really useful to describe as a particle - sometimes. Other times, it's useful to describe it as a wave. We have reams and reams of equations and theorems to deal with particles and waves, so when we can model a photon as one of them, life is easy. However, since both the wave model and the particle model are inherently wrong, if you set up an experiment properly, you can produce what seems to be a paradox. Heisenberg uncertainty merely describes the breakdown of the two models mathematically. Schrodinger's Cat is an /analogy/ only - it describes a phenomenon that only applies to things like photons and electrons.
&nbsp

Interestingly, once you measure a particle/wave, you change it - since it is impossible to measure something without interacting with it. The first explanation most people hear is that when you measure a photon as a particle, there's something about a waveform collapsing, and it "becomes" a particle. This is easy to understand, but is, unfortunately, pure rubbish. If you measure it as a particle, you will get some results that are consistent with it being a particle, and you will change something about it. That's all.
&nbsp

So to get to the encryption (although I'm sure this is already (-oo, offtopic)) here's how it works: find a particle that will change in some way measurable if snooped on. Have the sender and receiver each come up with a random sequence (polarizations). Using your photons, find the common choices in the random number streams. Now - if the photon is snooped on, (measured too early) you can tell. Even if you don't notice the snooping, unless the snooper picked the same sequence of common choices, (s)he's left with nothing. And that's the end of my post.

Re:law of indeterminacy??

[karlm]

Thanks for clarifying. We mechanical engineers aren't known for our particle physics. Most of what we get is hearsay.

Obviously thermal oscialtions in atoms are going to screw up any measurements of an atom's wavelength, but I didn't realize that the effects were totally absent. At what point does the particle/wave duality approximation break down? Above a mass of 4 AMUs? Below a velocity of 0.5 C? I'm sure it's more complicated than that, and I ask way too many questions, but I'd be interested in finding out how my 8.01 profs lied to me.

Professor Rivest told us about Adi Shamir's way of "breaking" quantum crypto. I described it better in another post, but basically you send photons into the photon emitter when it's not transmitting and look at the photons comming back in order to learn about the internal state of the transmitter. It's a cheap hack, but I'm not sure I would have thought of it. And of course, there are simple countermeasurees, like photodetectors in your transmitter.

Those crazy japanese

[autopr0n]

Those crazy Japanese. First they build the Super-kamakamode[sic] that can detect a single photon, and now they have ablity to emit them one at a time to!

And that doesn't even get into their cool anime and hot women.

But seriously, this is going to require a bit of work before it's totally practical for mass usage, right now they would have to use a huge photomultiplier tube in order to actually sense a single photon. I think it'll be a while before CCD or CMOS light detection is that good...

Or hey, maybe we'll all go back to vacuum tube computers :P

Re:Those crazy japanese

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, a British university and a research centre in Britain make a breakthrough (with a multinational research group behind it of course), and people congratulate the Japanese for funding it...

color

[Doppler00]

Hmm... I wonder what color that photon is? How can they send a single photon through a fibre optic cable and not loose it and still be able to detect it?

Re:color

[mikey13]

It shouldn't have a color. The color of light is determined on its wave length, and if there's only one photon, it wouldn't have a wave length. That's like asking what the color of an electron is: there is none because it cannot reflect light (photons).

Re:color

[AndrewRUK]

I think it may have a colour (but see below for why it may not). The wave-particle duality says that the photon has a wave associated with it, and that wave has a frequency given by dividing the energy of the photon by Plank's Constant (E=hf, or f=E/h) Whether it actually has a colour will surely depend on what that frequency is. If it is ouside the visable part of the e-m spectrum, it has no colour, in the same way that, for example, a radio wave has no colour.

1 photon? That doesn't seem like a bright idea.

[jdrogers]

Yeah, so we have the law of indeterminacy preventing encryption cracking, blah, blah blah.

But if we are going to consider laws of quantum mechanics, we only have a finite (less than 100%) chance of detecting the photon. So the LED will have to emmit multiple photon so there is a 100% chance of detection.

But then the indeterminacy law breaks down, doesn't it?

British usage

[kingdon]

Standard UK usage is to say "Avis are renting me a car", "parcelfarce are idiots", etc. Yes it is strange if you are used to the US practice of using the singular, but it isn't just for the BBC.

Irresponsible

[SumDeusExMachina]

This is certainly an astounding development in the field of photonics. Maybe now we can all get rid of programs like PGP that leave us vulnerable to government backdoors and move to some real encryption. Quantum encryption, by its very nature, is unbreakable. I thought that I would barely live to see its advent, but now with this it looks like it could be just around the corner.

However, one has to wonder what kind of restrictions that will be placed on this. What would you be able to do with unbreakable encryption? Share information on human rights abuses with your friends? How about plan the destruction of a high-profile government building?

The point is, it's time to show a little responsibility in the academic community. Just like the scientists who go ahead with playing God with stem cells before the ethical ramifications have been fully explored, these researchers have unleashed an unholy nightmare on the world that won't be fully realized until it's too late. It's bad enough that al-Qaida used GPG to communicate and coordinate their plans to commit atrocities agianst the US, but how much safer would you feel knowing that now not even the NSA can decypher their communications? Or even intercept them? It sets a dangerous precedent, and I think they ought to fully understand what they are bringing about before they actually release a prototype.

Re:Irresponsible

[Doppler00]

I was not aware that PGP had a backdoor. Who discovered this? There may be many even be loopholes with open source encryptian packages that are only known to some mathmaticians in the U.S. government. I don't think you can ever have 100% security with encryption.

Re:Irresponsible

[Anonymous Coward]

like, you trust Furious George and his furious little monkeys to uphold your legal rights when they've got the technical capabilities to abuse them?

Re:Irresponsible

[billstr78]

I agree that sioe scientists should think a little more about the social ramificactions of a technology before it is fully developed, but in this case, they are not doing much more harm than the cipher writers of centuries ago did when those codes were "un-breakable".

The problem is that breakable codes can work against us as much as they work for us. If a top general was sending plans about where they were going to look for members of the al-Qaida network next, I would want them to send it using a truly un-breakable. We have face the fact that people can transfer information in a fashion that does not allow any one else to find out what was transfered. There are many covert channels (stenography) that the al-Qaida network uses that are already very difficult to de-crypt.

Re:Irresponsible

[Anonymous Coward]

People can have one-to-one communications which are not interceptable by meeting in person and being cautious. Unbreakable encryption just gets rid of the geographic barrier. Maybe we should make laws so that whenever any people (or perhaps just people who fit certain "profiles") meet to discuss anything, they have to inform the government so as to allow them eavesdropping rights?

Re:Irresponsible

[RoninM]

Well said! I've been lobbying Congress for years to ban all forms of person-to-person interpersonal communication, including encrypted forms. Most Congressmen, are blissfully unaware of the inherent danger in whispering and face-to-face communication in secluded areas, and refuse to place the proper restrictions upon its use until we can more thoroughly investigate the ethical (read: political) ramifications! I hope, anyway, that it's just naïveté. One Senator, who shall remain nameless, seemed to agree with my viewpoint, but wanted to meet in private to discuss it! If that's not proof of the anti-American corruption that plagues our government, nothing is! Needless to say, I turned down his offer, but I won't judge him for his evil actions. Everyone knows the government rules by divine right, and God works in mysterious ways.

Now just imagine the ramifications of allowing secure encryption! What if Osama bin Laden had one of these terminals hooked up in his cave? Instead of using letters and his international installation of terrorists to securely transmit instructions face-to-face, he could have IM'd them! We MUST stop this trend towards privacy and technological innovation if we are going to continue to lead the world in human rights and technological innovations into the future!

Re:Irresponsible

[tuxlove]

Maybe now we can all get rid of programs like PGP that leave us vulnerable to government backdoors and move to some real encryption.

Quantum encryption will not replace PGP or any other form of encryption, so far as I see. It's only good for point-to-point encryption of data, protecting someone from eavesdropping on the data stream between those two points. You can still spy on the data beyond either end of the point-to-point link. This technology will be useful for, say, banks who have geographically distant computers passing financial data back and forth, connected by a dedicated link which is physically secure on either end.

This won't be too useful for Joe Internet User, because he doesn't have a direct optical link to all the sites on the Internet he wants to connect to. He connects to an ISP, who connects to another upstream provider, etc., up to the network backbone. Even if each hop was connected via a quantum-encrypted link, the routers themselves are still vulnerable to "tapping", as are Joe User's computer itself and the sites he connects to.

Even if Joe User had a secure direct link between all sites he connects to, he'd be SOL if someone broke into his computer and took his personal documents or the like. So, Joe still has to encrypt personal information above and beyond the encryption provided as part of the data transport. That way, if he's hacked, they can't be discovered, and if he sends them across the net they can't be spied by taps on the various routers between him and the data's destination. Joe can't use quantum encryption for local data, because it's not usable that way. Quantum encryption is only useful as a method of transmitting a one-time pad key between two points, not for encrypting data on a permanent basis on one's hard disk. Read up on one-time pads to see why (the key is as large as the data- not too useful in most cases). So Joe still has to use conventional encryption to truly protect himself.

Re:Irresponsible

[TheAwfulTruth]

It didn't have a back door, it had a security hole (bug). Doh!

Re:Irresponsible

[_typo]

We MUST stop this trend towards privacy and technological innovation if we are going to continue to lead the world in human rights and technological innovations into the future!

The US has a death penalty. "Lead the world in human rights"??? You must be joking!

Re:Irresponsible

[_typo]

Share information on human rights abuses with your friends? How about plan the destruction of a high-profile government building?

How about running an efficient organization that controls world economy and supports major forms of terrorism. (No, not al-Qaida, the US Govt. who supports the worst terrorist state the world has known in the past 1000 years or so. That state being Israel naturally.)

Just like the scientists who go ahead with playing God with stem cells before the ethical ramifications have been fully explored, these researchers have unleashed an unholy nightmare on the world that won't be fully realized until it's too late.

Who has played God with stem cells? We're nowhere near as advanced. But now I'm curious, this "unholy nightmare" would it be the cure for cancer? Parkinson? Cause that's what the method promisses.

It's bad enough that al-Qaida used GPG to communicate and coordinate their plans to commit atrocities agianst the US, but how much safer would you feel knowing that now not even the NSA can decypher their communications?

First I wasn't aware that they used encryption at all. The attack was fairly low-tech. And as for the NSA not being able to decypher communications...reality check...they can't now. My 4096bit PGP private key isn't going to be broken anytime soon.

The point is, it's time to show a little responsibility in the academic community.

The point is others like you have mentioned these things regarding the atom bomb and other such developments. Get this once and for all, scientists by definition create science (that was stupid!) which also by definition is a tool. Invented by a few smart ones to the used by the masses. This leaves you with two options:

1-Label as irresponsible the guy who invented the first boat that eventually lead to the slaughtering of the American natives and other such atrocitys. Label as irresponsible the guy that invented the blade, the fire arm etc, for the damage that those caused has not yet been fully understood.

2-Shut Up! (This may seam like flamefesting but is a real point) If it weren't for these developments I wouldn't be awnsering you in a public forum on the Internet (what's that) inside my room, a few meters away from a bathroom. I'd be shouting an incoherent form of speech inside a cave in the middle of some forest. Now which one do you choose?

The grey reality is that scientists can't be bound by ethics. They're the brains not the conscience in our society. We do need a better conscience but we're not doing any good by trying to force scientists to refrain from making progress. The Vatican tried that already. Galileo's book where he chalenged the idea that the earth was the center of the universe was on their list of banned books up until 1992. By 1992 2 new theories had been formulated and proven wrong (Newton's and Einstein's) and a third was on it's way (superstring theory). What do you think would have happened if the Chuch had gotten it's way? What do you think will happen if the US gets their way?

Re:Irresponsible

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, dude, put your HUMOR detectors on high, please.

Thank you.

Re:Irresponsible

[Anonymous Coward]

This troll is making it up as he goes along. NSA can't break PGP, but then again al Qaeda didn't use it.

Re:Irresponsible

[fishebulb]

actually they didnt use GPG, they used PGP. but more importantly they also used face to face after they realized their sat phones and encryption was being eavesdropped on

I feel just as safe as i always did. spying is not always the answer, and outside of complete 1984, its impossible to spy on everything which would be required to find out about the plots.

I personally dont see an ethical implication. Id be more worried about researchers outside the US doing something than acedamia world. WHen the US prevents research here, it will move elsewhere. but youd did have a point, the ramifications should be explored BEFORE banning said research

i think the NSA/CIA should do a better job in the first place so we dont have to play cleanup. they should be preventive, its no secret other people deeply hate the US, this will alwas exist, but when we screw around with their lives for the sake of "democracy" (or whatever rhetoric they used for overthrowing govts)

Re:Irresponsible

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me, but BULLSHIT. I am really sick and tired of the whole "oh gee, that COULD be used for something bad, so we'd best stuff it back under the bed...".

Sorry, but I'm not buying it for one second. The potential for good far outweighs the potential for bad.

Notwithstanding that, who's to say that the only way a criminal can plot some nefarious scheme is via this new "uncrackable" encryption? Remember the Native American 'code talkers' in WWII? Not a whole lot of people understand their language...

Who's to say that some terrorists couldn't just subsitute "cheese" for "semtex" and concoct some nice innocous sentances right there...

I absolutely refuse to give up my ability to learn new things and explore new technologies because they might be used for something bad...

See also:

Automobiles
Water
Guns
Telephones
Envelopes
Secret Ink
Keys
Plastic Bags
Bug spray
Gasoline
Propane canisters
SCUBA tanks
snow
Freon
etc...

Re:Irresponsible

[RoninM]

...That state being Israel naturally.

The United States supports Israel because it is a democracy with similar values. Note, however, that the US, despite its clear loyalties, is not above official rebuke of Israel's actions, e.g., the reoccupation. I am amazed that you can distort truth so readily while turning a blind-eye to cold facts. It is a fact that Palestine houses many terrorist groups--Hamas, for instance--that have gone unmolested by the Palestinian government. Arafat has, many times, excused this fact by saying he is not in control of the terrorists and cannot exert control of the terrorists. It is a fact that only this past week Arafat made a symbolic, and mostly meaningless move, to shut down a small fraction of Hamas and only then under threat. It is highly likely that, as before, those arrested will be released. Yet you ignore this. More, you ignore the fact that the US, under the Clinton administration, endlessly negotiated with Israel and Palestine and put forward a truce, accepted by Israel, that gave Palestine 95% of its demands. Arafat refused, clearly demonstrating his unwillingness to compromise and the lie that is his pledge for peace. If Arafat cannot accept 95% of the Palestinian demands handed to him on a platter, and cannot stop the terrorist groups, then what is his purpose? If he is so stubborn and inept, he should step down. Yet he will not, and you will support him, all the while ignoring the cold, hard facts that Palestine sponsors the murder of Israeli children, supports the murder of Israeli children, and--by refusing a compromise slanted heavily in their favor--causes the murder of Palestinian children.

What do you think will happen if the US gets their way?

This comment would be offensive if it weren't so blatantly moronic and baseless. Lest you forget, it is the US that has pioneered the use of stem cells and biotechnology. The transistor? The television? The phonograph? Maybe the telephone (although there's at least a dozen claims to creation, 2 from Italy)? Stephen Hawking's voice (but not Stephen Hawking)? The Internet? The list of US technical innovations goes on and on and on. To claim that the US is a ludite nation is nearly as much a flight of fancy as your claim that Israel is the worst terrorist state to exist in history. Israel's not even the worst terrorist state to be on the Gaza strip. And to claim that the US wishes to halt the progress of technology is silly while you support Palestine and other nations with a strong fundmentalist movement that would have these countries ban television, the Internet, music, etc.

That said, I don't agree with Bush's stem cell research decision on any level. It was a political cop-out which showed neither the strength of Christian morality his supporters claim or the secular stance that I would prefer. You paradoxically excuse his decision, however, by saying that non-scientists should serve as the conscience of society. Isn't this what Bush was (expected to be) doing?

Any links to the method?

[Fjord]

I tried "law +of indeterminacy" encryption and other combinations on google, but it all came up blank. Does anyone have a link describing how to use this for encryption?

Re:Any links to the method?

[Hidyman]

The single photon led would not be used for encryption per se.
It would make the link between 2 points secure because the stream couldn't be read without the receiver knowing that the stream had been tampered with.

Re:Any links to the method?

[Anonymous Coward]

attempting to observe your indeterminancy query makes the results disappear.
you could try switching off your monitor and have a 50-50 chance that the results are there when you turn it back on

First, a single-photon LED...

[Tsar]

...next we'll have single-neuron Slashdot posters.

Look, the future is now!

Re:First, a single-photon LED...

[redcliffe]

We already do. They're called anonymous cowards usually. Some Anonymous Cowards are a little smarter, but most aren't.

Re:First, a single-photon LED...

[Anonymous Coward]

ummm, what? I'm confused. . .

Re:First, a single-photon LED...

[hearingaid]

Well, one neuron would be better, yes ;)

just teleport it

[abes]

I remember seeing a documentary on someone who managed to teleport a photon using entanglement. While I'm sure the equipment/setup/everything is much more expensive, it could theoretically provide an even better method of secure communication. While you might not be able to listen in without diverting the photon from its destination, it is possible to stop the photon period (also as one poster already mentioned, you can't allow for a perfect world, so its always possible for photons to be dropped [or appear to be dropped] requiring another photon to be sent out, and thus making the system again insecure).

Re:just teleport it

[mtheorist]

Teleportation by use of the quantum entanglement method is not actually teleportation, per se. The idea of teleportation here uses the fact that if the quantum numbers of two particles are exactly the same (except those of location) then the particles are indistinguishable. Quantum entanglement uses this by allowing two entangled particles to transfer properties from one place to another, meaning that this electron I have here with n=2, l=1, m=0, and s=1/2 can transmit its characteristics to another electron so the two are exactly the same. Using this on a large scale, if enough particles were entangled one could create a duplicate of something X miles away, destroy the original (convert it to energy or whatever), and thus have "teleported" an object.

Still Waiting

[Effugas]

Physics kooks annoy me. They do. The Alexander Abians, the Time Cube guys, all of em have always bugged me. They've always had the feel of someone who feels themselves too smart to actually do the research to understand something.

So the fact that I hold tremendous doubt in something the physics gurus all take for granted *really* bugs me.

But, I'm telling you. Sooner or later the guys pushing quantum entanglement(*nervous twitch* spatial PRNG *nervous twitch*) will meet up with the guys working on quantum encryption, have some kind of matter/anti-matter postulate collision, and I'll have this big goofy smile on my face.

I'm telling ya, neither work particularly well by themselves, but in the context of the other, both Quantum Crypto(states can't be copied) and Quantum Entanglement(states can be copied, at FTL no less) are completely borked. It's the only kook conviction I haven't been able to shake, and you'll have to email me personally if you want to suffer through my full kook reasoning on it(you can probably guess what it is). But I'm telling ya: Next few years, possibilities are getting shuffled.

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

Re:Still Waiting

[Jerf]

Regrettably, quantum intrusion detection (as this isn't really encryption) and quantum entanglement correspond to "states can't be undetectably read (and subsequently re-created and sent onward)" and "states can change at a distance, but not meaningfully at FTL speeds".

When stated more properly, it can be seen that there are no conflicts, and one isn't going to "save" us from the other. Quantum intrusion detection depends on the uncopyability of certain states (else the intruder could recreate the photon and send it along undetectably). Quantum entanglement has other significant limitations, which ban any form of communication whatsoever at FTL speeds, and make it impracticably difficult to use it in any significant way otherwise.

Keep on kookin'. Reading the Slashdot headline takes on particle physics will definately assist in that endeavor.

Re:Still Waiting

[Kz]

In Quantum teleportation, states aren't copied, since de original measured state is destroyed by the measurement. The resulting 'copy' is not a copy, but a 'reconstruction' of the original; the same down to quantum indeterminancies.

And the FTL part isn't correct either, since the teleportation needs a 'classical component' via normal information transfer. The 'spooky action at a distance' (as Einstein called it (have you read his article on that? very interesting reading)) is FTL, but can't be measured without destroying the quantum state.

Re:Still Waiting

[Effugas]

I have no desire to keep on kooking. :-) That I am utterly convinced of something I cannot adequately argue is driving me *hard* to learn the necessary physics to address the topic reasonably.

But I'll do a braindump, if only to see your reaction. Warning: Unbridled speculation based off a single plausible postulate follows.

It's an interesting corrolary from crypto research that you can never be entirely sure a data source is truly entropic, as opposed to the output of even an adequately designed pseudo-random number generator. (Take a look at RC4 -- something that takes that little code to implement could certainly exist as a style of equation for atomic and subatomic scale apparently entropic output.)

Knowing that one of the least understood but most significant errors in cryptography would be utterly unknown in any other field of research lends some credence to my thinking that at least some supposedly entropic processes are really pseudoentropic. It's not that I think physics people are "morons", like one person mailed me. By the contrary, they're some of the brightest people around. I just think they're underestimating the degree to which psuedoentropy, defined as a stream of "provably random" data derived from a single seed value, can mask actual entropy. GIGO, and all that.

That being said, that I'm only slightly familiar with the apparently disproved "hidden numbers" theory that believes it directly addresses this line of thought has given me a great deal of humility. My hope is that the argument against hidden numbers tends to focus on easily detectable randomizers and is overapplied to higher level processes.

Both Quantum Intrusion Detection and Quantum Entanglement, of course, make quite a bit of sense with a PRNG in place. Of course two particles can get entangled; if both can be forged with the same seed, they'll vary with exactly matched entropy. (We use this exact property when we use RC4 as an encryption system: By XORing against matched entropy, a sender can transmit to a receiver using what is indistinguishable from pure noise to anyone without the seed value.) But what would the "seed" be? Surely not position and velocity, even if it is tempting to discretize by Planck Length. I nominate direction, defined as degree of relative dimensional translation, but then I don't have much of a place to nominate anything :-)

Whatever the seed value might be, once two particles match in any way, any subsequent measurements of both relative to eachother would tend to be uncomfortably related, even if analyzing each bitstream directly would evidence perfect entropy. And that's what we find from what little I know about the entanglement experiments. (Why yes, I'm throwing doubt on my own words to prevent other people from kooking out on my own gnawing musings.)

As for Quantum Intrusion Detection, a correction that makes perfect sense, the presumption is that it's impossible to duplicate the seed values that give rise to the sender/receiver relationships. But entanglement is all about duplication of seed values, as for that matter is photon transmission through a non-vacuum. You can't hide the fact that states are related by simply saying that entanglement implies "states may change". Spins aren't just changing; they're changing in a manner predictable to one another. If that's possible, it's difficult to out-of-hand conclude that a supposedly intrusion-proof photon couldn't itself be split, and have its entangled partner measured upon the original having its state set. You could claim the newly split pair couldn't possibly have the same seed value -- but that's more of a technological challenge than anything else. Especially if direction is a seed value, four ninety-degree bounces would equalize direction.

There's other stuff on my mind(most notably, some annoyance with the anthropomorphized concept of "observation" and "measurement" that could be abused to presume that the "observation" of dinosaur bones sent a signal sixty-five million years previous to establish the birth and death of dinosaurs in general and that specimen in particular), but I think I'll stop playing public kook for now. :-)

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

Re:Still Waiting

[Effugas]

The duplication of quantum indeterminancies suggests quite strongly to me that they're not so indeterminate after all. I'm speculating that there's a psuedoentropic function on the quantum scale.

If nothing else, an algorithmic function universally deployed either in space or matter wouldn't *need* to be transmitted, thus matching the asymptotic FTL speeds that seem to be required. How long does it take to transmit nothing at all?

I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that this is going to suck up about six to eighteen months of my life someday, in which I'll actually have read and completely grokked Einstein's spooky action paper.

Until then, the only reason I give these thoughts any credence is because they're my own.

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

Re:Still Waiting

[Jerf]

Your clarification was helpful. (High praise from me, esp. while wearing my Slashdot hat.)

I poked around a bit on the net and HVT is still up for debate in some physicist circles. It's not well respected, but I don't know that we could call the case closed.

I'd still stick with my gut, that even if hidden variables exist that explain this stuff, we're not going to be able to access them, but when it comes to physics, I'm not into dogma.

Your post was stimulating. (And of course the "Intrusion Detection" bit I think is general, not aimed specifically at you... yes, technically thats in the cryptography domain but most people read too much into the word "cryptography".)

Re:Still Waiting

[Effugas]

Jerf:

Your respect is much appreciated. I'm maintaining a healthy amount of doubt in my own ideas, so I do appreciate a bit of respect in them from those who know quite a bit more of the nuts and bolts than I.

I see the hidden variables(or spatial PRNG seeds, or whatever) as being useful in the sort of way chemistry operates: Useless for individual predictions, but critical for larger scale operations and cleaning up some unparsimonious nastiness(like asymptotic data transmission rates; see my other reply to this thread).

Quantum Intrusion Detection actually bugs me more than entanglement. I actually believe two particles can be made related over some distance(my quibble is that their entropy itself was made related, thus obviating the need for a message to be sent between them). Proving a negative -- that it's conceptually impossible to duplicate some data stream -- is alot tougher, and I sense dangerous levels of overconfidence on the matter.

Physics is not a field that's particularly compatible with realities of security research. Schneier's analogy of planting a ten foot steel pole in the ground and expecting the enemy to drive right into it isn't something that lends itself well to a realm where entire classes of theory aren't developed because the math is too obscure to work with. "As long as you're concerned about the notes, you can't create music." And as long as you're struggling to get there in the first place, it's impossible to really understand what might go wrong. Airliners were a mature technology long before they were an obsessively safe one.

I really think we don't know enough about the nature of quantum reality to be making absolute statements of uncrackability. But then, it's easy for me to claim ignorance; I just know the security side, not the physics.

That's going to change, someday. Hopefully I won't go kooky because of it. (Now *there's* a statement that could seem tremendously ironic in a few years!)

Cryptography can be a much wider field of inquiry if you let it be. It's actually equal parts psychology and mathematics, for instance.

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

Re:Still Waiting

[Iainuki]

In 1964, Bell proved what is commonly known as the "no-hidden-variables" theorem. This result is more properly understood as a proof that certain aspects of quantum mechanics are incompitable with a LOCAL hidden variables theory. This theorem is quite well-known, at least among physicists with any philosophical tendencies or historical interests, and also quite solid. A fully mathematical and rigorous proof requires graduate-level quantum mechanics, though you can make an effort which captures the essence using only ideas from an upper-division undergraduate course. However, the result is not trivial and so will require both math and quantum mechanics background, and some patience to work through.

While the proof is more difficult, the result is simply stated and relatively simply understood. Bell showed, using conservation laws and the specific indeterminacy required by quantum mechanics, that a measurement of one particle in a pair of linked particles could provide the experimenter with information about the other particle regardless of the size of the spatial separation of the particles (Bell's actual proof was both more and less specific than this, but that is the essential idea). The way this information was expressed was in the form of an inequality which could not be obeyed by local hidden variables theories. In the early 1980's, Alain Aspect et al. did an experiment on a modified version of the situation Bell examined, and found that the inequality was, in fact, violated. The original experiment had statistics which were extremely skewed in favor of the quantum mechanics interpretation (some ridiculous number of standard deviations; eight comes to mind, but I'm not sure). Since then, better experiments have been done which have increased the certainty even further. Thus, Bell's theorem is very solidly established.

What does this mean? It means that local hidden variables theories are not capable of accounting for quantum effects, and so do not describe our universe. "Local" here is a technical term meaning, "no signals travel faster than the speed of light." The motivation for this is that faster than light effects, when viewed from certain reference frames: they may travel backwards in time, generating causality paradoxes and all sorts of other nonsense. "Hidden variables" means that to each quantum particle a specific, determined state is assigned at all times. So a "local hidden variables theory" posits that each particle has a specific state and that these states may not influence each other with faster than light effects. These theories are what Bell proved are not able to explain quantum mechanical effects (btw, it has since been proven that Bell-like effects cannot be used to transmit information faster than light).

It looks like this post is positing a local hidden variables theory: the quantum particles carry "seeds" which do not influence each other faster than light. This is the kind of theory which Bell and Aspect disproved, so if this is the correct interpretation, it's almost certainly wrong (to whatever number of standard deviations the latest version of Aspect's experiment has shown).

I won't speak on the notion of randomness vs. pseudorandomness, since I am not well enough versed in information theory to make rigorous distinctions.

Direction as an independent quanity doesn't make much sense; position and momentum are vector quantities, so they already include notions of "direction" as normally defined.

Here I will diverge from the generally accepted to express my own opinions. The measurement problem is an unresolved problem in quantum mechanics which is too philosophical for the tastes of many working physicists. I personally think the answer lies in careful consideration of the arrow of time and decoherence, but that's mostly just speculation on my part.

Re:Still Waiting

[Effugas]

First of all, let me say that I really appreciate the rigor of your response. The better responses I receive, the more I'm motivated to bring my own level of knowledge up to that of my peers. So, to be blunt, thanks for helping me think :-)

I have a few thoughts on the matter, now that I understand the presumptions behind Bell's Inequality(mainly, that the entire set of hidden variable theories would have to output non-QM results), but I'm going to sit down with my ex-roommate(degree in Physics from Purdue; couple years in optics at Intel) and work things out correctly first. Anything less would be SNAKO(Situation Normal, All Kooked Out) :-)

Too many parentheticals :-)

--Dan

Not Useful for Packet Networks

[pryan]

I've been following this technology with great interest. There seems to be a fundamental problem: it is point to point. Its applications will be fairly limited.

It seems to me, at least in terms of networks, that this would really be used to secure lines between networks, clusters, or individual computers. But on today's public Internet, this isn't really an issue. Of course, I would rather use this technology than to not have lines protected with quantum indeterminism.

Most security people are more concerned about platform security than link security. If this technology can be used to reinforce something used for platform security, then boo yeah! Otherwise, this is cool, but I'm not going to get a heart condition over it.

The only platform benefit I see is reducing the need to perform expensive computations to encrypt and decrypt data. Let the link take care of that and thus increase performance. Of course, how many nodes on the Internet only want to talk to their nearest neighbor? And how many routers and such are between them and their nearest neighbor? It might not even be possible to secure the link between a node and its nearest neighbor in most cases.

I doubt this technology will impact current Internet infrastructure all that much. We'll see.

Re:Not Useful for Packet Networks

[switchninja]

You have the routers and switches along the path to the destination perform the encryption. Much in the same way current IPSec VPNs are created. This way the encryption remains transparent to the application as well.

Re:Not Useful for Packet Networks

[IAmHansemann]

For practical quantum crypto systems, which you can build now, you are right. OTOH, there exist (theoretical) scemes which allow for secure transmission of quantum information over long distances, using quantum repeaters.

Going to long distance means (in this context), that the required resources increase only polynomially with the distance (opposed to an exponential increase if you do not use a quantum repeater).

Theoretical means, that there is no experimental implementation of a quantum repeater yet. Nevertheless, it would be much easier to build it than, say, a fault tolerant quantum computer.

Using these techniques, it is possible to build secure switchable user-to-user channels, which are secure even if all repeater stations or switches are under the control of an allmighty eavesdropper (Eve). As always, Eve can prevent you from communicating, but if you can communicate, you can be sure to communicate privatly.

For more details, see e. g. quant-ph/0111066.

IAmHansemann

Abstract

[Aetrix]

Here's the Science Magazine Abstract

----Abstract-----

Electrically Driven Single Photon Source
Zhiliang Yuan 1, Beata E. Kardynal 1, R. Mark Stevenson 1, Andrew J. Shields 1,Charlene J. Lobo 2, Ken Cooper 2, Neil S. Beattie 3, David A. Ritchie 2, Michael Pepper 3
1 Toshiba Research Europe Limited, Cambridge Research Laboratory, 260 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge, CB4 0WE, UK.
2 Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0HE, UK.
3 Toshiba Research Europe Limited, Cambridge Research Laboratory, 260 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge, CB4 0WE, UK; Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0HE, UK.

Electroluminescence from a single quantum dot within the intrinsic region of a p-i-n junction is demonstrated to act as an electrically driven single photon source. At low injection currents the dot electroluminescence spectrum reveals a single sharp line due to exciton recombination, while another line due to the biexciton emerges at higher current. The second order correlation function of the diode displays anti-bunching under a DC drive current. Single photon emission is stimulated using sub-nanosecond voltage pulses. These results suggest that semiconductor technology can be used to mass-produce a single photon source for applications in quantum information technology.

-----End Abstract-----

If anyone has access to Science Online (http://www.sciencemag.org) you can download the PDF reprint at this link: here.

NOT Uncrackable

[MikeyNg]

The application refers to its use in quantum cryptography. It doesn't render the encryption process uncrackable, but makes it able to detect that someone is eavesdropping and/or has broken the encryption. With current methods, you can't tell if someone has broken your key and read your message. Using quantum cryptography, you can tell when someone has read your message.

(It all goes along the lines of you can't observe something without changing it. If someone along the way intercepts the message and observes it, they will change the message and you can detect THAT on the other end.)

Re:NOT Uncrackable

[CaptainSuperBoy]

I have between little and no understanding of quantum anything, so forgive me if I'm off base. Would the encryption method you're describing require the use of quantum computers, or would it be possible on normal binary computers? It would seem to me that in order for this to work, your computer would have to support a bit whose value was undetermined (a qu-bit).

Re:NOT Uncrackable

[jfedor]

You are mistaken. It is uncrackable. Perhaps not very practical. Read the book.

-jfedor

Re:NOT Uncrackable

[MWright]

It is uncrackable.

It does detect if someone is eavesdropping, but it detects it as the key is generated, not when you send the message. Your post implies that you send the message, and can detect if anyone eavesdrops... this is not the case. Two parties use these quantum effects to generate random numbers... they can detect if someone is eavesdropping on this; if someone is, they don't have to use that key (even if someone does try to eavesdrop, it won't work, by the way). Once they have this key, they can use it in One-Time-Pad encryption, which is also uncrackable (see a text on information theory for an explanation about why OTPs are uncrackable).

Re:NOT Uncrackable

[MWright]

Quantum computing and quantum encryption are two different things. Quantum encryption technically would not even need a computer at all... as long as you have some way of transmitting and receiving photons, and some way to detect them, etc., pen and paper would be enough (though very impractical!)

Re:NOT Uncrackable

[jjeffries]

It's totally crackable, you just have to figure out how to get that half-dead cat in a box spliced into the line correctly first...

Re:NOT Uncrackable

[Caacrinolaas]

No, it would make message sent in such a manner uncrackable.

Sure, a single _bit_ could be intercepted, but as soon as that is done, the sender can simply stop transmitting.

The end result leaves the interceptor with nearly zero information. Not very usefull.

Re:NOT Uncrackable

[MikeyNg]

OK, that makes sense. Take my karma down a couple of notches for being incorrect. At least I *sound* like I know what I'm talking about. :)

I was just incorrect on the implementation of how you'd use something like this. I can see how using this to generate and "send" OTPs makes it uncrackable. My bad.

Re:NOT Uncrackable

[Silver222]

The cat isn't half dead. It's either dead and alive at the same time, or it's dead in one universe and alive in the other.

If I had mod points, I'd have modded you up as funny though...

Re:NOT Uncrackable

[IAmHansemann]

If quantum cryptography was used for direct communication, you would be right. But, quantum cryptography should better be (and often is) called quantum key distribution. This means, using quantum crypto, you do not distirbute messages, but keys only, which (a) do not contain any usable information, and (b) after having verified that noone has listened in, are used for classical one time pad cryptography.

Hans.

Re:NOT Uncrackable

[MrFredBloggs]

No, you just dont know if its dead or not. Theres nothing weird about it. Those sort of effects dont work on objects as big as a cat. Whats to stop you x-raying the box?

Re:NOT Uncrackable

[John Sullivan]

Whats to stop you x-raying the box?

Because if the cat then turns out to be dead, it's YOUR fault for collapsing the wavefunction.

rejected

[kippy]

Goddamnit! This is the second time I've posted a story, had it rejected and seen it posted by someone else within an hour.

Shit.

Re:rejected

[doooras]

the story got posted. the information is available to the world of /.ers. does it really matter who posted it?

this will crack quantum crypto

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

If this thing gets somewhat more advanced you will eventually become able to use the classic "man in the middle" attack. And since there are no keys involved in the crypto, it will work if you have only a connection to the cable. Sure it will cause some extra errors, as you cannot exactly copy the state of the photons, but that will only lead to the session being restarted, wich will make the mitm attack even simpler.

I see only 1 advantage of using this over traditional electrical wires, you have to actually break the cable to get to the data, but that is also the case now with fibre-optics, so it really doesn't matter.

just my thoughts, are they good ones ? ;-)

Superconducting Fibreoptics

[Hidyman]

It seems as though for this to work we would need fibreoptics that act as "Superconductors" to keep photons from being "Lost" on the way to their destination.

Re:Country Grammar

[Anonymous Coward]

You are single person criticize grammar but get wrong youself.

> The BBC is SINGLE organization and as a result
> the verb should be singular.

There's no uncrackable crypto

[andkaha]

If a human constructed it, a human can deconstruct it. That goes for everything, always.

Re:There's no uncrackable crypto

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you should read up on the concept of quantum encryption. Nobody is going waste time explaining the concepts on this thread. Also, please do not post if you know nothing about the subject.

P.S.:
If you feel you can crack quantum encryption, though it is physically impossible, feel free to prove it.

Re:There's no uncrackable crypto

[smack_attack]

I can use my quantum computer with quantum decryption to crack it. duh.

Re:There's no uncrackable crypto

[Anonymous Coward]

Re:There's no uncrackable crypto

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans didn't make the math or the physics that lends these schemes their strength. And these laws *do* lend asymmetry to a system that leverages them properly.

Consider the diffuclty of factoring versus the ease of multiplying. Consider one-way functions. And consider the absolute impossibility of watching a particle without changing its quantum information.

Think about these things before you go trolling away with unilateral assertions like "If a human constructed it, a human can deconstruct it." These things are not made or unmade by aphorisms. They're decided on the laws of physics and math.

Re:There's no uncrackable crypto

[CyberDong]

If a human constructed it, a human can deconstruct it. That goes for everything, always.

Does that apply to the philosophy that "If a human constructed it, a human can deconstruct it"? If so, it's a fallacy...

Re:There's no uncrackable crypto

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that apply to the philosophy that "If a human constructed it, a human can deconstruct it"? If so, it's a fallacy...

Well, so is the above statement.

Re:There's no uncrackable crypto

[cjpez]

While I have no real knowledge to back this up, I'm going to wager that you're wrong about this. I know enough about the quantuum world in very (I repeat: very) layman's terms to know that it's a really freaking messed up world down there.

The article seems to be indicating that they're relying on the fact that once you start observing systems you inherently change them (Heisenberg (sp?) basically), which gets extraordinarily important on the quantuum level (though not as much on the Newtonian level we're typically mired in). Read about it. I can totally believe they can create an uncrackable crypto system using quantuum principles . . .

Re:There's no uncrackable crypto

[cjpez]

Wow. I misspelled "quantum" no less than three times in that post. Brilliant.

Yeah, listen to what I say! I'm so good I can't even spell the subject matter correctly!

Gah.

Photon Light 3!

[artlu]

Hey! Now instead of using my photon light from thinkgeek.com to light my path i can shine it on computer systems and log in or use the different colors on an ATM machine in order to get someone else's money! Not to shabby for only $30!
My $0.02.
AJ

A New Level of Precision

[Jucius Maximus]

I guess David Allen (inventor of the photon light ) is kicking himself now because he's been one-upped when it comes to lighting technology!

Re:A New Level of Precision

[Hittite Creosote]

An LED on a keyfob - a very simple idea, and very easy to make once you have the idea of marketing them.

Now, in my opinion, the really smart guy is Shuji Nakamura, without whom you wouldn't have white LEDs yet.

More accurately

[parc]

More accurately, Quantum encryption IS OTP. The quantum part comes in when you generated the pad.

Maybe not the *key*, necessarily...

[Cool Hand Luke]

"We need the detection technology for single photons," said Dr Shields. "But most of the other elements are there. It uses standard telecoms cables.

This sounds like a promising breakthough, although I can't help but wonder how far off in the future the detection technology is. I can claim that I have the key to teleporter technology, object decelerator technology (big, fluffy pillows), but I still need object accelerator technology (a large enough catapult).

Then again *yawn* this object decelerator technology is so comfy... maybe I'll just take a nap...

Man in the middle

[mickonline]

Surely this doesn't make it properly uncrackable.

It prevents people from reading the message then passing it on, but not from reading then generating an identical one. Admittedly this is a problem with all mediums, but quantum mechanics aren't the final solution yet.

mick

Re:Man in the middle

[zuvembi]

Actually that is incorrect.

You'll have to look for a description of it, but it is in fact in impossible to eavesdrop and then resend the information. There is a very good description in "The Code Book" by Simon Singh. I'm not sure where else you would look.

Re:Man in the middle

[Anonymous Coward]

> It prevents people from reading the message then passing it on, but not from reading then generating an identical one.

No, it prevents people in the middle from reading the original contents *at all*. That's the whole point of using QM-based methods - any attempt to read in the middle indivisibly alters the message in ways detectable by both sender and receiver.

Re:Man in the middle

[Silver222]

The thing is, with an appropriate key length, you can't generate an identical message. Even better, you can tell if there is someone in the middle listening in.

You really should read the book, it's extremely interesting.

no!

[autopr0n]

Mod the other post I did as redundant. Seesh.

Uncrackable encryption HOWTO

[Luke]

quantum cryptography + one time cipher = uncrackable

one time cipher + shared secrets = uncrackable

AFAIK, these are the only two that are uncrackable. the latter is impractical because of the necessity of a large quantity of pre-shared random ciphers, and the former due to implementation (but not for long it seems).

Re:Uncrackable encryption HOWTO

[Tim C]

One time pad + anything = uncrackable

Uncrackable encryption is nothing new; the problem is produicng the large sequences of random data (one time pads) and distributing them securely.

As the old saying goes, "if you have a secure way to distribute the key (pad), why not use it to distribute the message..?"

Cheers,

Tim

Re:Uncrackable encryption HOWTO

[MikeBabcock]

The old saying is stupid ;-)

The method to distribute the key may be highly bound to specific points in space-time; that is, one may be able to get a large number of long code books to one's agents by giving them to those agents before they leave for foreign countries but it becomes very difficult to get them coded messages the same way (in person) unless they come back for them. Delivering new such codebooks in person may be possible for future agents as well.

Re:Uncrackable encryption HOWTO

[Anonymous Coward]

"if you have a secure way to distribute the key (pad), why not use it to distribute the message..?"

Let's say you have one person who needs to get a message to another person. They both 100% trust each other. But they are in different (hostile) countries.

If person A carries the data to person B directly he puts himself at risk. If he gets captured, they will know the contents of his data.

If he instead carries a key, nothing has been divulged.

Where that old saying really applies is if you are using a courier. You can never say such a person is 100% trusted. So there's a chance someone could turn him. Then the key gets copied and he delivers the now-insecure-key to its destination.

Strongest crypto for Britney

[Yodalf]

What kind of applications will absolutely require this extremely strong crypto?

With the RIAA, the MPAA, MS's DRM OS and this, I can imagine: the whole collection of Britney Spears works protected by quantum crypto.

What a waste.

* shivers *

Re:Strongest crypto for Britney

[CyberDong]

What a waste.

That's "waist". And don't forget the other parts...

Re:Strongest crypto for Britney

[Anonymous Coward]

whole collection of Britney Spears works protected by quantum crypto

I bet a lot of the keys you'd try with a brute force attack would produce a better sounding songs. I suppose this is a case of a thousand monkeys being faster than just one.

no

[Anonymous Coward]

No one ever said DES is uncrackable. No one (intelligente) has said, nor will ever say, that the new AES is uncrackable. No one (intelligent) has said, nor will ever say, that public-key cryptography is uncrackable. They will say the computations to crack them are "intractable", but not impossible.

The one-time pad (Vernam cipher), however, is uncrackable. It has been used very heavily since it was first introduced (1917) and, beyond being arguably the simplest automated cipher ever devised, is still being proven to be completely 100% uncrackable. Unfortunately, since the key lengths are at least as long as the message, and the keys can only be used once, exchanging keys can be a bit burdensome. Quantum cryptography is basically concerned with ways of exchanging pads securely. If our current understanding of the Heisenburg principle is correct, then current quantum cryptography (in combination with OTP's) is 100% uncrackable.

The failures of previous ciphers, especially public-key ones, is due to underestimating the difficulty (or "intractability") of certain computational tasks, but no one would have ever claimed that they were COMPLETELY secure, just secure ENOUGH. The Vernam cipher does not rely on computation (beyond addition mod 2), and is completely uncrackable.

RTFGoogle

[mypalmike]

It's not about timestamps. It's not "security through obscurity". It's about fundamental laws of quantum physics. Try looking at these links.

it's all about the probability

[Anonymous Coward]

When M intercepts the photon burst, he naturally modifies it (Heisenburg) before it reaches B. During the verification stage (which takes place over an unsecured line), A & B have a 0.25 probability per bit of detecting that M was eavesdropping. Thus, for an n-bit message, the probability of detecting M's presence is 1 - (3/4)^n.

If we replace M with E, things become even more dire. Like B, E will choose the wrong detector half the time, but it will choose the "wrong" half ("wrong" according to the verification stage). For a message of length n, there is thus a 1 - (1/2)^n probability that E will not be able to recover the message.

Note that quantum cryptography is not meant to be used to send normal plaintext messages. It is meant to be used to transmit one-time-pads. Generally you'd want these one-time-pads millions of bits in length.

Let's suppose you create a protocol to set up an uncrackable, 100% secure channel between yourself (A) and your friend (B). I (M) am a real bastard and want to annoy you by intercepting your key and having lots of fun. You send your friend a one-time pad with your LED, let's say 1kB (8 kbit) in length. Note that this key is thousands of times smaller than your average key would be, but my calcalutor chokes if I don't use an obscenely small number :).

There is a 3e-1000 chance of me sitting in the middle without being detected (of course this probability is exponential, so a sanely-sized keywould give me very little hope indeed!). So, you send your friend 1kB and darn! someone was eavesdropping. You'd think your application would alert you at this time ("hey! I can say with literally 100% certainty that someone is eavesdropping!"), but lets say your application is terribly stupid. So, you restart and send another key. Same thing! Another few keys, then a few thousand more, then a few googol keys here and there. Damn! You've been trying to get this channel started for literally billions and billions of eons, and still you can't quite connect because someone's eavesdropping! Determined, you keep on plugging away. Millions of universes have expanded and collapsed by this time, but you still it says someone is eavesdropping!

Of course the prudent thing to do would be to write your application so that it gives up once there has been found an eavesdropper with *100%* certainty. :)

Anyway, once you finally get a key sent without a man-in-the-middle, you use that key as a OTP for more conventional uncrackable (no probability involved here!) cipher. Presumably with each message, you'd attach and encipher a new OTP along with it (or just use your LED to exchange a new OTP).

Re:it's all about the probability

[Anonymous Coward]

Explain this to me ... I play MITM and I sever both the secure and the insecure line. From them I build two fully functional "secure" circuits where before we only had one. To A I pretend to be the recipient of the real OTP and I respond through unsecure line like normal. To B I send my very own set of photons which we use to set up a different OTP which we will use to communicate. How exactly will this go wrong as long as you always manage to stay in the middle on further communications?

although, to be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

Mankind did go tens of thousands of years -- until the 19th century -- without police, social services, and proper law (by "proper" law, I mean law which is just and extends to all citizens). Oddly enough, the 19th century was right about the time we started getting riots, too.

Re:although, to be fair

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Oddly enough, the 19th century was right about the time we started getting riots, too.

French Revolution? And since its Hannukah, Maccabi's in Rome (or was it Greece)? Riots have existed as long as mankind.

Re:although, to be fair

[SideshowBob]

Umm, what??

There were no riots in ancient Rome?

Not to mention all the other things you attribute to the 19th century, which ancient Rome had (or had facsimiles of). And its not like Rome was singularly unique in any of those respects.

You might want to take a western civ. course, genius.

Re:although, to be fair

[nido]

to finish the train of thought: "Riots have existed as long as mankind [has been oppressed]." People don't just go out rioting for the hell of it, there is inevitably some form of trigger. I won't say anything about what I think that trigger often is...

Re:although, to be fair

[Naikrovek]

oh yes they do. people riot for any fucking reason they please. they don't need to be oppressed, the just need to know the outcome of their teams game - win or lose, they riot.

ask someone in chicago.

Re:although, to be fair

[spankfish]

Humans: just another domesticated animal.

Any chemists out there now about this?

[Amyloid]

What is the source of this LED? Quantum Dots? Single Molecule? Doped Buckies? SAMs? Anyone know how they do it?

indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

This is useful for symmetric-key cryptography only. And, being symmetric-key, its applications extend only to those which use symmetric-key cryptography, not asymmetric-(aka public-)key. Weird, eh!

If it becomes viable, it will likely replace communications where DES, Twofish, AES and other symmetric-key cryptosystems are being used, e.g. ABM's (or ATM's for you yanks), a whole slough of other financial services, maybe cellphones and the like, and other "miscellaneous" purposes (maybe a new "Hotline" from D.C. to Kabul?)

clearing up some confusion

[Anonymous Coward]

There seems to be some confusion about how a cipher can be "uncrackable". Let me explain to you the One-Time Pad, an uncrackable cipher.

Me and my friend have previous shared a secret key, which is a random string of bits, of length 10. Now I wish to send my friend a message, a bitstring which is also of length 10. I take each bit from the key, and add it to the corresponding bit of the plaintext, modulo 2 (think XOR), to generate my ciphertext. e.g. if our key is 1010010101111010 and my plaintext is 1011110110101010, then my ciphertext is 0001100011010000. The key is then destroyed (for high security, it's stored on magnetic tape, then physically burned once used), never to be used again.

Now, let's say you have intercepted a message from me to my friend. The message is 1100101010000100. The only things you know about the secret key used before are: (1) it has never been used before; (2) it as a random (and uniformly distributed) smattering of 1's and 0's. Now tell me: what was the original message?

Unless public-key cryptography, it is not prone to "key attacks" (since you have no public key to work with). Unlike other symmetric-key (aka secret-key) cryptosystems, you have no frequency analysis or algorithmic analysis to work with. So long as you don't know any of the bits of the key, it is literally uncrackable, and has been for the past 80 years.

So, then the question is, how do you and your friend decide on a key? It's not easy. The best way, so far, is to physically go to your friend's house, make sure no one else is around, generate a random bistring, copy it onto two tapes (your friend keeps one; you take the other home), and keep it safe until it's time to use it.

What quantum cryptography does is lets you send a key to your friend over a long distance. But, do to quantum mechanics, you and your friend will be alerted if someone has intercepted it.

Nothing's really changed substantially here. It's the same uncrackable cipher that's been uncrackable for the past 80 years. The only difference is that now you can generate keys with your friend over a long distance, without having to drive to his house.

Re:clearing up some confusion

[andkaha]

The problem of generating truly random numbers has always been the weak point of one-time pads. As soon as there is an algorithm for doing something, e.g. generate random numbers, you can reverse engineer it (maybe that's what I should have written in my first message). Yes, I know it takes seven million years, or whatever, to do it, but it is do-able. And some smart kid will reduce the time to twenty minutes within 10 years. An agent in the field can't carry a quantum computer. Not yet anyway. And when she/he can, it will probably be possible to jam them anyway, as with radio transmissions. Or some other science breakthough will deem their crypto unusable or unsafe.

Re:clearing up some confusion

[asterisk_man]

It is agreed that generating random numbers HAS been the weak point of OTP. But, this being the quantum world it is god rolling the dice. So, seemingly the only way to crack this random 'algorithm' is to get past the uncertainty principal. I dont think you are going to find many knowledgable people in the field who will say thats possible. Maybe you say, "why should we think they know what they're talking about? physical 'law' has been proven wrong many a time." To that I say...nothing since i cant predict the future. But lets just say that it doesnt seem like the randomness of the quantum world is going away any time soon. so unless you are encrypting something that must stay secret for 200 years or more i would say generating OTP via quantum effects will be good enough for now.

Entanglement and spooky action was: Re:RTFGoogle

[CoolVibe]

Heh, I did some extra reading and it's indeed promising, albeit difficult to implement. The act of observation disturbs the exchange, hence, whatever you intercept, its never the right "key".

Nifty... But it's still somewhat volatile and a lot can disturb it. I still doubt this can reliably be done in a "real world" environment

Call me sceptic :)

Badly written Troll

[horza]

Sorry, this only gets 3/10 as a troll. I appreciate the attempt at humour but you contradict yourself all over the place, and are a bit *obvious* with some attempted analogies and factual inaccuracies. Plz make the satire a bit more subtle next time.

Look forwards to next attempt,

Phillip.

More accurately

[parc]

More accurately, Quantum encryption is OTP. The quantum part comes in when you generated the pad.

Hey, Adolf! Fancy meeting you here!

[Anonymous Coward]

(No, not al-Qaida, the US Govt. who supports the worst terrorist state the world has known in the past 1000 years or so. That state being Israel naturally.)

Hey man, the cleaners called, they said they managed to get the semen stains out of your white sheet -- are you going to have time to swing by there and pick it up in time for the cross-burning and negro-lynching?

PED, not LED

[SpinyNorman]

IMO a single photon doesn't qualify as "Light".

Calling that a LED would be like taking something that emitted single H2O molecules and calling it a tap!

Bah humbug.

Re:PED, not LED

[Alsee]

IMO a single photon doesn't qualify as "Light".

What moron modded this up as insightful?!?!

His "insight" is that he can't see it, so it's not light. HELLO! McFLY!

-

Re:PED, not LED

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry for the AC post but I'm moderating

It is an LED. It lights up just like any LED if you apply constant current (RTA). Hitting it with a super-short pulse of current causes just one photon to pop out.

Re:PED, not LED

[MikeBabcock]

PED is definately more accurate than LED ... SPED for single photon emitting diode seems just as accurate though.

How?

[2nd Post!]

Well, it's not *that* difficult.

You input energy X, enough to account for a single photon and circuit inefficiencies.

Where X isn't enough energy for more than one photon.

The problem with the detector is that it's possible to build detectors that register single photons, it just requires that someone builds one, and that shouldn't be impossible either. It's a function of creating an optic trap akin to a waveguide and lens such that the single photon has to fall into a set of paths which is appropriately matched with a CCD able to register single photons.

Re:How?

[tzanger]

The problem with the detector is that it's possible to build detectors that register single photons, it just requires that someone builds one, and that shouldn't be impossible either.

Umm... I was under the impression that photomultiplier tubes were regularly built this sensitive.

Re:How?

[2nd Post!]

There you go then :)

I don't do this for a living, I took an Optics course in college.

Aren't photomultiplier tubes akin to... opamps?

And... can you chain one to a fiberoptic cable?

Re:How?

[tzanger]

Aren't photomultiplier tubes akin to... opamps?

Kind of... but for photons. A google search for "photomultiplier tube" or "pmt" spits back tons of physics experiments but I was hoping for something like a howstuffworks description to link to in here.

And... can you chain one to a fiberoptic cable?

That's just a physical connection; I don't see why not.

Re:How?

[2nd Post!]

It's a matter of efficiency, maybe?

Cause if there's any mechanical-physical inefficiency, 1 lost photon means the transmission needs to be resent, or whatever the protocol allows for, because one lost photon could easily be one stolen photon.

It's certainly *possible*, it's just a question of is it currently feasible?

wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Using a technique called "brute-force", computers participating in the challenge simply began trying every possible decryption key."

DES was not cracked. A single message, encrypted by DES, was decrypted by trying every key until they found the right one. That's not cracking the algorithm. Cracking the algorithm means you don't need the key to decrypt a message, or you find a significant shortcut to figuring out the key, etc.

Every algorithm can be brute-forced, in theory. Question #1 is how much work it takes. In this case "tens of thousands of computers" were set to the task. Question #2 is how long it takes with the available resources. The article doesn't even give an answer to that. But consider: if you really do have an adversary who can summon that kind of computing power against just *one* of your messages, but you only need your message to be kept secret for a week and it takes that adversary 4 months to crack it with his huge distributed network...well then your message is still secure for as long as you need it to be, and DES works just fine.

If, on the other hand, you need that message to be secure until long after the Sun goes out, then you'd just use 3DES, since DES has long been thought to have too short a keylength (56-bit) to be considered "strong." In fact it was criticized for this even when it was introduced in the seventies and there weren't 10000 P4's sitting about with nothing better to do than try a brute-force attack. So, knowing this, you use 3DES (128-bit key), and the rest of the world can spend its time marshaling every PC, Mac, PS2, and microwave on the face of the planet against your 3DES-encrypted 2001 tax return, and odds are it'll *still* be safe long after humans have evolved into glowing spheres of light. This is assuming that computing power continues to increase at the pace of Moore's law.

Cryptography is *plenty* strong enough; fantastic algorithms exist and no they're integrity is not at all called into question by the "DES cracking" the article refers to. The problem is with how cryptography is used in the real world. The problem *is* in keys not being kept secure and other things like that, not in algorithms being cracked (unless you're the DVD-CCA).

James

This crap

[Elmogoaty]

Why have I been receiving emails from CmdrTaco, in which he seems to be speaking in some kind of code language? Whenever Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda [cmdrtaco.net] gets bored (and who wouldn't, running a site like Slashdot all day), he roams through the Slashdot database, penis in hand, looking for people who might enjoy engaging in homosexual orgies with him. How he determines this is anyone's guess; but if you have a homosexual-sounding nickname, or a nick with the letter P in it, you're in trouble. So this time, he found you. Lucky you. CmdrTaco's code language is relatively easy to decipher. He prefers to speak in thinly-veiled sexual innuendo to evade the watchful (but relatively stupid) eye of Slashdot's parent corporation, VA Software [yahoo.com]. CmdrTaco's "Commander" is, of course, his penis -- a small, withered little thing that lives in his pants that only comes out in the presence of other men or at the beck and call of CmdrTaco's own right hand. His "Taco bells" are the shriveled testes that droop beneath his Commander, and his "Taco sauce" is his, well, jizz. It should be more than obvious to you now what he means when he asks you to "ring his Taco bells" or "taste his gourmet Taco sauce." Lastly, there is a practice he refers to as "Taco-snotting" and the more shocking "circle-snot." Good Lord. What is "Taco-snotting?" "Taco-snotting" is the term used by CmdrTaco to refer to the practice of sucking the penis of a homosexual man (or unwilling heterosexual; CmdrTaco is rumored to prefer rape), then blowing the semen out his nose onto his partner's (victim's) face and body. A long, bubbly stream of milky-white semen is left on CmdrTaco's face [yahoo.com], dribbling out of his nose and down his cheek: hence the term, "Taco-snotting." A "circle-snot" is a Taco-snotting circle-jerk, another practice common among the Slashdot crew. CmdrTaco, CowboiKneel [yahoo.com], and Homos get together and Taco-snot each other with their gooey, sticky cum -- spooging their jizz-snot all over each other's faces and pasty, white bodies, until they're covered head to toe with each other's man juice. This can go on for hours. For the homosexual penetration that follows this lengthy foreplay, Roblowme is usually there to provide plenty of anal lubricant; he owns a limo service and has ample supplies of motor oil and axle grease ready to go. To complete this perverted orgy, fellow geeks Michael, Timothy, and Jamie will usually join in, dressed in tight leather mock-S.S. uniforms, jack boots, and leather gloves. The whole group then proceeds to snot each other's spunk and whip each other's pudgy asses with riding crops and chains until their pale, white geek bodies are exhausted and soaked in stinking sweat from the hours of passionate, homosexual revelry. Ewwwwww. So, can I stop receiving these emails? Hopefully. You most likely forgot to uncheck the "Willing to Taco-snot" checkbox in your account preferences. CmdrTaco has probably already got the hots for your wad, and he's probably already been lurking outside your bathroom window for weeks with a camera, some tissues and lube. There's no escaping a geek in heat, so it's probably too late for you, but you can possibly rectify this situation. To remove yourself from CmdrTaco's sights, log into your Slashdot account, go to your user page, click on Messages, and uncheck the box next to "Willing to Taco-snot." Maybe he'll ignore you. Probably not. I can't stop receiving these emails from CmdrTaco!? If you indulge him in a Taco-snot or two, he might leave you alone. You might also want to look into mail filtering, restraining orders, or purchasing a heavy, blunt object capable of warding off rampaging homosexual geeks in heat. Trust me, when they charge... oh, the humanity. If he gets you, and you let him Taco-snot you, you will most likely end up tied up in his basement to be used as his sex slave for the rest of your life (or until he accidentally drowns you in spunk in a circle-snot). Have you ever been Taco-Snotted? Unfortunately, yes. I first met CmdrTaco at an Open Source Convention [yahoo.com]. He invited me back to his room for a game of Quake and some "gourmet Tacos," but when I got there, he jumped me and tied me to his bed, stripping me. After taking his "Commander" out of his pants, Mr. Taco made me suck the withered thing six times. He then performed his vile Taco-snotting ritual on me three times over the next two hours, bringing me to orgasm after sweaty, mind-numbing orgasm... then he snotted my own milky-white jizz back onto my face, into my mouth, then again on my exposed belly. CmdrTaco invited several of his Open Source (or rather, "Open Sauce" -- man sauce) buddies over to continue the twisted snotfest. Linux Torvalds raped my ass [yahoo.com] with his "monolithic kernel [yahoo.com]," and Anal Cox used his "network stack" in a multitude of unspeakable ways on and in every orifice in my defenseless body. Michael was there in his leather Nazi uniform, caning my ass with a bamboo pole and ranting about "all those Censorware freaks out to get him." How did you finally escape, you ask? After about 16 hours of countless homosexual atrocities perpetrated against my restrained body, they all finally went to sleep on top of me, sweat-soaked and exhausted. I was left there, covered in bubbly, translucent jizz-snot, chained to the bed, with half a dozen fat, pasty-white fags lying around and on top of me. Fortunately the spooge coating my flesh worked wonderfully as a lubricant; I was able to squirm my way out of the handcuffs and slip out the back door. I'm just glad I survived the ordeal. These geeks had a lot of built-up spunk in their wads -- I could've easily been drowned! That's horrible. Does "Taco-snotting" have anything to do with CmdrTaco's "special taco"? No, that's a different disgusting perversion CmdrTaco indulges himself in. CmdrTaco is usually not satisfied with merely snotting your own jizz back onto your face, he most often enjoys involving his own bodily fluids in his twisted games. WeatherTroll [slashdot.org] has spent some time trying to educate the Slashdot readership about this vile practice (emphasis added): You may be wondering what CmdrTaco's "special taco" is. You will be wishing that you hadn't been wondering after you finish reading this post. To make his "special taco", CmdrTaco takes a taco shell and shits on it. He then adds lettuce, jacks off on the taco, and adds a compound to make the person who eats the taco unconscious. Of course, the compound does not make the person unconscious until the taco is fully eaten. Thus CmdrTaco force-feeds the taco to the unsuspecting victim. After the victim is unconscious, he is held against his will and used for CmdrTaco's nefarious sexual purposes. This includes shoving taco shells up the victim's ass, Taco-snotting, and getting Jon Katz involved. Completely different, yet no less revolting. It should be clear to you now that CmdrTaco is a very, very sick individual, as are most of the Slashdot editors. Does Jon Katz get involved in any of this? I thought he was a paedophile, not a homosexual. Actually, Jon Katz is a homosexual paedophile. He's also a coprophiliac, and, many suspect, a zoophile. Jon Katz is somewhat of a loner and doesn't involve himself in circle-snots. Mr. Katz usually engages in a game called "Katz juicy-douching [yahoo.com]" with his harem of little-boy slaves: a vile practice which involves administering an enema to himself of the little boy's urine (forced out of them with a pair of pliers), spooging the vile muck from his ass back into the enema bag, then squirting and slathering the goo all over himself, and the little boy's chained-up and naked bodies. If he's in the mood, he will sometimes skip refilling the enema bag and just squirt it from his ass [yahoo.com] onto his boys. Unwilling boys are further tortured with the pliers until they comply and allow Mr. Katz to juicy-douche them for the rest of their lives. As I already said, Mr. Katz is also a zoophile. As if the sexual escapades with the helpless little boys aren't enough, Jon usually enjoys his juicy-douches best when his penis is firmly planted in a female goat's anus [yahoo.com]. He is also rumoured to get off on watching his little boys eat the goat's small, bean-like turds. ...Are you getting hard writing this? Why, yes. :) Join me in a WIPO-snot? No, thanks. I'm already CmdrTaco's boi toi. ________________________________________ READER COMMENTS Fucking hilarious too bad it didnt get a 5:Funny (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.02 19:01 (#2644105 [slashdot.org]) this is good shit man Re:Taco-snotting@Home! (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Dark_Cobra87 [slashdot.org] on 2001.12.01 23:03 (#2642180 [slashdot.org]) Oops, forgot to check that Taco-snot option... Re:Fuck Linux! Fuck him hard! (Score:-1) by Fecal Troll Matter [slashdot.org] on 2001.12.01 20:55 (#2641791 [slashdot.org]) Mmmmmmm, Taco Sauce... [galeon.com] Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars) Look (Score:-1) by ArchieBunker [slashdot.org] on 2001.12.01 20:19 (#2641679 [slashdot.org]) I love trolling but this shit is getting old, fast. At least start mixing them up a little bit. How about the 'How OSM was Freed' series? http://www.naawp.org/ Re:Congratulations! You have been WIPO'd!! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.12.01 8:37 (#2640602 [slashdot.org]) Stop posting this! I've got hangover and Taco Snotting doesn't make me feel any better. I'm really glad that Taco Snotting is illegal here in Europe. Re:Snot me baby, one more time! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.30 1:01 (#2634213 [slashdot.org]) Get a life you loser! Don't you have anything better to do than insult CmdrTaco and the gay community? We are not perverts, we are human beings just like you. So give it a rest! Re:Hello, perdida!!! Won't you snot my face tonigh (Score:-1) by perdida on [slashdot.org] on 2001.11.27 14:13 (#2618764 [slashdot.org]) Shut up you asshole. I am not great, I am merely adequate. I live in adequacy. Go back to Russia. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.26 22:22 (#2616035 [slashdot.org]) You weiner trool! Re:The Taco-Snotting FAQ Rides Again!! (Updated so (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.25 9:14 (#2609574 [slashdot.org]) try to find a pic of actual "taco-snotting"! fucking funny it would be! so go to gay porn sites day in and day out until you find a man giving another man a blowjob that has jizz coming out of his nose and mouth. by the way, keep up the good work Re:Snotting another first!! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.23 12:18 (#2603370 [slashdot.org]) WIPO, this is getting waaaay old, either drop it or revise it.... there've been no updates for days now... CmdrTaco Re:It's Taco SPAM!!! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.22 17:28 (#2600815 [slashdot.org]) A truly excellent and very humourous troll indeed! However... To complete this perverted orgy, fellow geeks Michael, Timothy, and Jamie often join in, dressed in black Gestapo uniforms, jack boots, and leather gloves. Black GeStaPo uniforms? The GeStaPo (Geheime Staatspolizei - Secret State Police) wore civilian clothes (although there are reports on them occasionally using Allgemeine SS uniforms in occupied territories). I seriously doubt that perverted individuals like CmdrTaco et al would have the good taste to ever wear the outstandingly beautiful black Waffen SS uniforms! Please update the FAQ accordingly. Re:It's Taco SPAM!!! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.23 4:06 (#2602610 [slashdot.org]) Actually, it appears you are both wrong!! Ah ha!! I think our boy WIPO was thinking of the Allgemeine SS [militariacollection.com] uniforms. Waffen SS were grey. Re:Microsoft's Taco-Snotting Connection (Score:-1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.21 4:49 (#2594325 [slashdot.org]) oh yeah, you say you have masturbated only 2 times to this post. well, by the time it takes for me to get through reading it, i usually end up masturbated 5 to 6 times, 10 to 12 if i have the goatse.cx homepage loaded up and am looking at it side by side with the slashdot page. my keyboard, hands, mouse, monitor, the underside of my desk and around the floor under my desk are cum soaked and sticky with the man smell i know and love. Re:Microsoft's Taco-Snotting Connection (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.21 4:41 (#2594311 [slashdot.org]) for version 2 you should make a total re-write of the cod...errr...text and add some details about cmdrtaco and the homo-gang's happenings with their coworkers (osdn?) and all of the gay revelry they enjoy and promote. by the way, did i just see cmdrtaco on television promoting the nax hair removal system? i guess after using vaseline in and around his ass he grew quite a ponytail and it had to be removed somehow...ouch! Re:Microsoft's Taco-Snotting Connection (Score:-1, Troll) by TRoLLaXoR [slashdot.org] on 2001.11.21 3:59 (#2594191 [slashdot.org]) WIPO, do you notice how few comments you get for anything you write/post/spam nowadays? -Trollaxor Jon-Katz docking (Score:-1) by sales_worldwide [slashdot.org] on 2001.11.20 11:53 (#2588488 [slashdot.org]) You forgot to mention Jon Katz's "docking" games, where he places his chopper head to head with another chap, and rolls the other guys foreskin over his own circumcised end ("docking"), providing him with fantasies of actually having his own forskin ... "Making linux GPL was the best thing I ever did" - Torvalds. I'd hate to see the worst thing... Re:Snotting a first! (Score:-1) by Fucky the troll [slashdot.org] on 2001.11.20 11:28 (#2588446 [slashdot.org]) Woah! When did the WIPO troll get freed? And how the fuck did I miss it? Excellent FP, sir. This is a sig virus. Please put me in your sig Re:Snotting a first! (Score:-1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.20 11:04 (#2588407 [slashdot.org]) omg that is crapflooding material if i ever saw it!!!!!! and u got a first post!!!! whoot to the wipo troll!!! GW, please.... (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.19 9:03 (#2583756 [slashdot.org]) GW...you know we love every hair on your 27 acre ass... and I, for one, would never do anything untowards your graceful demeanor. And you probably have several friends that would love to help you do the bear dance all over my face if I so much as spelled your name wrong. And you know I'd defend your Constitutional right to defame God in heaven. I'd even help fund your education, should you ever decide to take that route. Hell, I'd buy you a tall tepid bear-whiz beer if you were here with me, right now! But. ...if you can't find another topic, I'm gonna step over your dead mother's grave and kick your assuredly anesthetitized butt clear across the playground. Now go stick your shaved head back down inside the woman's toilet, and just to show there's no hard feelings, I'll jump in the tow-truck and drive right over to help you pull it right out...ok? thanks Re:Help me Taco-Snotters!! (Score:-1) by mark knopfler 69 [slashdot.org] on 2001.11.19 8:25 (#2583695 [slashdot.org]) I DO NOT BELIEVE YOU SIR. FOR ONE THING, THE E-MAIL FROM CMDRTACO DOES NOT HAVE ENOUGH GRAMMATICAL AND SPELLING MISTAKES. Let's be realistic here, CmdrTaco usually types with one hand, and since he is shaking from jacking off his aim on the keyboard isn't too good. Those e-mails were a little too well written. Sorry boy, you'll have to do better. Re: What the hell is "taco snotting"? (Score:-1) by WeatherTroll [slashdot.org] on 2001.11.19 8:14 (#2583667 [slashdot.org]) You should update this to say VA Software instead of VA Linux. YOU ARE WINNER (Score:1) by smackmonkey [slashdot.org] on 2001.11.19 7:06 (#2583510 [slashdot.org]) Crackhead moderators: this is +5, Hilarious material. -- CNN declares War on Islam! Left-wing America declares War on its Civil Liberties! Re:On Taco-Snotting 1.9 (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.19 5:40 (#2583336) [slashdot.org] This was funny the first 100 times. Now it is getting boring! Digusting and Shameful (Score:-1) by egg troll [slashdot.org] on 2001.11.18 22:27 (#2582054 [slashdot.org]) Having masturbated *twice* to this post, I'm still incredibly aroused! Come over for a Taco Snot. I'll be wearing my crotchless Clifford the Big Red Dog outfit!! For more info check out this /. article [google.com] IMPROVE THE FAQ (Score:-1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.18 12:03 (#2580822 [slashdot.org]) add more links to goatse and to cowboineal's site to make it better. a link to rotten.com would be nice too Re:IMPROVE THE FAQ (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.18 12:18 (#2580832 [slashdot.org]) and a link to michael's site and to jon katz's site if he has one and homo's site. i dont know what else to say. maybe a few links to phallic.org they have nice penis pictures! a link to the planet quake site or whatever. really make the reader feel this faq really answers their questions. oh yeah, and when you talk about cmdrtaco snotting you, say he brought you to "orgasm after sweaty orgasm". describe it more is all i'm saying. and use more italics and bolding! and when you talk about jon katz shitting or whatever have a link to fecal japan on rotten.com other wise a great job wipo troll! keep up the good work! Re:CmdrTaco's filthy secret! (Score:-1) by Wil Wheaton [slashdot.org] on 2001.11.18 6:41 (#2580438 [slashdot.org]) Hi. Let's be buddies.. butt buddies. -- WIL WHEATON DOT NET [wilwheaton.net] WIPO speaks the truth (Score:-1) by dead_puppy [slashdot.org] on 2001.11.18 5:33 (#2580342 [slashdot.org]) Here is an e-mail I received a week ago: From: malda@slashdot.org To: puppy_dead@hotmail.com Subject: were where you last friday? :( I thought we where supposed to meet at Backdoor's at 8-ish, sugar-lips? You could've at least told me that you could'nt make it! I was even in my favorite pink skirt for you, honey-cup... next time, you could be more considarite and tell me you cant come... bastard. -- CmdrTaco (malda@slashdot.org) You finding Ling-Ling's [babysue.com] head? Taco snotting is WRONG!!! (Score:-1) by Big_Ass_Spork [slashdot.org] on 2001.11.18 4:53 (#2580300 [slashdot.org]) I do it wrong Laying here in the shadows of my room, I squint up at my love. My Ms. Portman. I am sore and tired after fucking her for eight solid hours. My chapped and aching dick is soaking in grits to relieve the pain. She gets on her knees and starts lapping the grits up out of the bowl. She places her beautiful hands on my penis and starts to lick the grits off my achy piece. Massaging my nutsack she.... WAIT, I DO IT WRONG!!!! Yanking my dick out of her mouth I throw her to the ground and shove it in to her gaping freshly fisted ass. [goatse.cx] "OH BIG ASS SPORK!! Fuck my ass, fuck my ass good. DEEPER, my stallion, deeper!! Make a Beowulf cluster of sperm on my back!!" "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of this baby!" I DO IT WRONG!!!! --- All your Sporks are belong to Big_Ass_Spork! What you say?! All your Sporks are belo... forget it... Rob Malda Dead at age 25! (Score:-1) by j0nkatz [slashdot.org] on 2001.11.17 22:54 (#2579596 [slashdot.org]) I just heard some sad news on the radio -- famous queerbait Rob Malda was found dead in his Holland home this morning. The details were a bit hazy, but it seems that he drowned in jizz while Taco Snotting his friend Hemos. I'm sure everyone in the /. community will miss him -- even if you didn't enjoy his queer antics and boring ass website, there's no denying his contributions to the homosesual cultural development, particularly in the areas of Taco snotting. Truly an American icon. I wanna Open Source sex so it won't be worth a shit either. TACO-SNOTTING is really Donkey-Punching (Score:-1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.15 6:38 (#2567601 [slashdot.org]) No no no, the correct term for that is "donkey-punch". I have eye-witnessed this amazing eye-popping event demonstrated on unsuspecting hose-monsters by my frat brothers in the past.. . :-) Re:the effect of knowlege laws... (Score:1) by AbsoluteRelativity [slashdot.org] on 2001.11.15 5:31 (#2567457 [slashdot.org]) The WIPO Troll [foundus.com] Slashdot and the Karma Lottery - News for uber monkeys, by uber monkeys. Re:Taco-Snotting (Score:-1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.13 9:27 (#2557632 [slashdot.org]) Oh, man that's just sick ! HOW DO I GET AN ANONYMOUS PROXY? (Score:-1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.13 9:03 (#2557604 [slashdot.org]) TELL ME WHERE I CAN GET AN ANONYMOUS proxy please WIPO Troll. Maybe later i will join you in a snotting at my place. ;P Re:Taco-Snottage!?!?!? (Score:-1, Offtopic) by vikool [slashdot.org] on 2001.11.13 7:43 (#2557495 [slashdot.org]) what is this bull shit,i feel offened that some people feel so so senseless to post stuff like these esp when such a tragic incident has occured Re:Taco-felching!! (Score:-1) by I.T.R.A.R.K. [slashdot.org] on 2001.11.11 22:38 (#2551890 [slashdot.org]) Where the fuck do I sign up?! - I throw rocks at retarded kids "Adequacy.org: Where congenital stupidity is not an option, but a requirement." Re:Taco-felching!! (Score:-1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.11 21:53 (#2551753 [slashdot.org]) this shit is hilarious..keep up the good work. Re:Taco-felching!! (Score:-1, Offtopic) by rockwood [slashdot.org] on 2001.11.11 21:49 (#2551746 [slashdot.org]) OMG! That is the most disgusting thing I have ever heard! WHo in their right mind would sit down and waste the time to construct such a replusive story. I guess I'll be skipping lunch and dinner today.. and possibly tomorrow also. The game doesn't affect reality. Reality affects the game. Re:Ban this! It's disgusting!! (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.11 14:43 (#2550701 [slashdot.org]) dude, this is crap-flood material if i ever saw it. duuuuuuuuudddddddddddddeeeeeeeee. Re:Taco-Snotting = HATE SPEECH (Score:-1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.11 8:16 (#2550266 [slashdot.org]) horny_rob_6969@hotmail.com Ah, so that's what the alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.horny-rob newsgroup is about! MOD THIS UP PLEASE!!! (Score:-1) by egg troll [slashdot.org] on 2001.11.11 5:34 (#2550024 [slashdot.org]) +5, Arousing For more info check out this /. article [google.com] Re:Taco-Snotting = HATE SPEECH (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.11 4:39 (#2549891 [slashdot.org]) WINNER> Re:Taco-Snotting = HATE SPEECH (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.11 4:37 (#2549887 [slashdot.org]) I love you. Why do you use your bitchslapped account, rather than signing up for a new account to post at +1 before getting bitchslapped by the censors here? I guess I should speak for myself, but I don't want to log out and lose all my slashdot customization properties, nor do I want to lose my 50 karma yet. Re:On Taco-Snotting (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 2001.11.09 9:19 (#2542412 [slashdot.org]) you fucking rock! right down to the expanded cvs id! WIPO trolls > linux

There certainly is uncrackable crypto

[Anonymous Coward]

The use of a one time pad, with truly random keying material (even if it appears random, but is in fact periodic, no matter how long the period, it will eventually be cracked) is uncrackable. Each ciphertext has equal probability of deciphering to any plaintext. This, it is impossible to crack.

Re:Entanglement and spooky action was: Re:RTFGoogl

[mmol_6453]

Actually, I'd rather call you a skeptic. What you said doesn't stink.

polarised light?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe this article didn't go into detail because the technology is still classified.

A while back there was an article in the news about quantum cryptography using photon polarity to ensure that the photon cluster received was the same as the cluster sent.

There was also some mention of timing the clusters so that nobody could break in and create a man in the middle attack without being detected.

It's all pretty obvious if you think about it a little bit. Electronic security doesn't hold a candle to the security potential of optical communications.

Re:Entanglement and spooky action was: Re:RTFGoogl

[CoolVibe]

So I'm not a native english speaker... :-)

(oh, and it's quite late here now... bugger...)

It really was done before

[pc486]

"The Code Book", at least the british version, does describe that this unbreakable quantum encryption actually had several sucessful attempts befor this special LED appeared. I believe it was sucessfully done though the air at up to one mile. I would quote but since I'm moving the book is packed up. If you don't own the book, go buy it. It's a very good read.

Christmas Lights

[Anonymous Coward]

Stay away from the Single Photon LED Christmas Lights, I heard they sucked.

thanks, brainiac

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to feed me.

-- the troll you responded to

of insecure lines

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's a problem. There's a bit of a hidden assumption that an insecure line is always inseverable. A guess a better name for it would be "public" instead of "insecure".

If that fails, then you can fallback on various identification procedures. One simple solution would be to get A to send B a signed datestamp (and maybe get B to send one to A just for fun) using RSA signatures or ElGamal signatures or the like. Another solution would be (in a similar vein) to use a Zero-Knowledge ID scheme, like Feige-Fiat-Shamir. Unfortunately all of these solutions depend on theoretically "crackable" mechanisms.

Anyway, usually your "insecure" channel is public, which allows for eavesdropping, but doesn't allow for impersonations. A classic example would be a telephone ("hey Barbara, why do you sound like a 14 year-old boy?"), though admittedly the telephone wouldn't be so great for automated cryptography :)

Not only theoretical.

[Mr_Icon]

This application is described fully in 'The Code Book', by Simon Singh, although the method was only theoretical at the time the book was first published."

Uhm... I believe this is wrong. The book was issued in 1999, and it contains this sentence in chapter 8:

In 1995, researchers at the University of Geneva succeeded in implementing quantum cryptography in an optic fiber that stretched 23 km from Geneva to the town of Nyon.

Moreover, one paragraph further we see:

More recently, a group of scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has once again begun to experiment with quantum cryptography in the air. Their ultimate aim is to create a quantum cryptographic system that can operate via satellites. If this could be achieved, it would enable absolutely secure global communication. So far the Los Alamos group has succeeded in transmitting a quantum key through air over a distance of 1 km.

One of us is wrong -- either I'm reading this from an edited version of "the Code Book", although nowhere does it say "second edition", or the original poster needs to re-check his facts.

Re:Not only theoretical.

[Anonymous Coward]

innaccurate, nay ignorant, reporting on slashdot? oh, say it isn't so!

Re:Not only theoretical.

[hephro]

The experiments you cite were proofs of concept. In particular, they could not guarantee that their light source would only emit one photon at a time and hence they had very bad security (if the light source emits two photons, you can capture one and let the other go; the two photons are correlated and you can essentially use the stolen photon to break the protocol.)

-Hein

Re:Country Grammar

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a difference between a grammatical error ("the BBC are") and a typographical error ("BBC is [a] SINGLE").

Re:Irresponsible (Getting OT, sorry)

[bonoboy]

I'm sorry, I must say that for once scientists have charged ahead and decided that stem cell research is for the benefit of all humanity, and should be applauded! After the fucked up things scientists have given us (the nuke, et al) it's good that something which acts at the fundamental, medical level - not just a new toy - is being taken seriously enough that those with the knowledge are willing to risk going to jail to bring it to us.

"Ethical" ramifications are never hashed out. People just argue ad infinitum. How long, exactly, would you say they should wait? Until either everyone on earth shares the same religion or there is no religion anywhere? Until everyone is in exactly the same sociopolitical caste and there's no racism, so everyone agrees? Dream on. Stem cell research will do more to improve the lives of humans than anything prior. Just give it time to become available to everyone. Not developing it won't make anyone's life better. So why wait?

Not a big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been able to do that for years. I'll demonstrate right now, using a single photon...

Want to see it again?

random numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, random numbers are always a concern. The nice thing about pseudo-random numbers (such as gathering system entropy, a la the Linux kernel, or watching lava lamps, or watching your smoke detector for radioactive decay) is that there are so many different methods, which are all separate from cryptosystems, and can all stay completely private. If my friend and I are generating a OTP with the LED thing, he can be flipping coins for his random bit generation, and I can using numbers from the stock market page of my newspaper for mine, and neither of us really wants to know what the other's doing, and the cryptanalyst then won't be able to find out either!

Of course current randomising techniques are pretty good. If we take the exactly of radioactive decay, sure, maybe you get a 50.08% probability of a 1, or a 0.013 correlation between consecutive bits, or something like that. Ehh, whoop-do-doo :)

Those horrid garbage-like PRNG's (a la C's rand()) are fortunately a thing of the past (for cryptographic purposes anyway, at least I hope so). So you can't deterministically "guess" the OTP. Radioactive decay should theoretically be pretty good for random numbers, once people figure out ways to get rid of the biases in their equipment.

The nice thing about OTP's is that small amounts of non-randomness (as long as it isn't due to deterministic algorithms) doesn't matter much. e.g. image you intercept a coded message, and you find out that the OTP was done using a biased Geiger tube. You figure that there's a 1e-337% chance that the message says "LET'S BOMB AUSTRALIA TOMORROW!" (as everyone knows, encrypted messages are always written in all-caps), a 1e-214% chance that the message says "CAN YOU SEND ME THE JOHNSON FILE?" and a 1e-65% chance that it says "9&Q&*>#N_A_ARRUA^", what would you guess the real message is?

In the real world, it would probably be even worse. As equipment gets better, you'd get more and more these plausible messages, each with ridiculously ridiculously low probability of being the real message.

I mean think of it this way. If the OTP were truly 100% random, then ciphertext of length n bits would have 2^n possible corresponding plaintexts, each with 1/(2^n) probability of being the original message. If your PRNG (again, as long as it doesn't rely on a deterministic algorithm) is, say, only 95% random, then some of possible plaintexts would be given a very, very slight boost in probability of being the original message, and some would decrease in probability. For your average e-mail message, say n = 10000, you'd still have way too much to wade through that it'd make the changes in probability negligible, me thinks.

Umm.. not impossible

[cybercrap]

You can spoof bob to alice and alice to bob and just intercept the signal and then resend it. FYI, alice= sender, bob= receiver. This encryption stops you from listening in, but you could just receive the signal, ie block it from bob and make alice think you are bob and then regenerate the signal and send it to bob and he would think you were alice. Or atleast so I would think.

Re:Umm.. not impossible

[CatherineCornelius]

This introduction explains how the quantum channel is used by Alice and Bob to negotiate a key. Sure, you could eavesdrop, but having read the stream does not enable you to clone it in a way that would spoof Bob.

Re:Umm.. not impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you can spoof the two sides. We would break the fiber between Alice and Bob. Handle the negotiation like Bob would when talking to Alice, and similarly handle the negotiation with Bob like Alice would. We would end up with two different keys on either side of us, and we wouldn't be a passive listener but instead would have to decrypt and encrypt data on the fly in both directions.

EU Issues Moratorium on Sense of Humor

[RoninM]

Two things.

One, I was--of course--joking.

Two, yes, I agree, it's far more humane to burden the rest of society with the cost of maintaining those unreformable few whose actions are so blatant, terrible abuses that one has to question their humanity, at all. I, like you, would rather an innocent mother and her child--displaced and homeless--go hungry, than a miserable mass murderer be given his fair end.

Now, if you want to approach the topic from the standpoint of whether the justice system works well enough to support the inclusion of such severe penalties, we'll have more to discuss.

Old thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Recall reading about these things about 10 years ago. Many amateurs have built their own devices and actually it is not hard. All you have to do is do some little calculus for your led and get some other cheap electric equipment. It is not expensive either.

For like 20$ you can get a device that generates genuine randomness in a way that can be practically used. The theory for this "unbreakable" encryption pops up every once in a while. Generally in magazines where editors have no glue about crypthography. It's soon almost 100 years old thing.. Wake up.

The channel can be attacked, and the message read.

[arcadum]

The channel can be attacked, and the message read; it just takes conventional means.

Quantum cryptography is great when it works! Imagine what happens when Eve just sits on the line, (i.e. Eve observes all of the transmitted photons). Eve is effectively making it impossible for a decypherable message to pass from Alice to Bob.

What then are Alice's choices? I will give you a hint: To send the message Alice has two practicle options.

If the hint didn't do it for you,
1) Alice sends the encrypted messages using a conventional, non-single photon quantum, method.
2) Alice decides that the cost involved in Bob recieving the message is an uneconomical choice, and thus Alice will not send it.
Either way message is not sent with a single photon quantum encrytion scheme.

P.s. The man in the middle attack works with quantum crypto if multiple photons are fired because one photon from each burst can be diverted to Eves listening device.

-- Matt

How abut the other end ?

[AftanGustur]

In order to use this tech you will have to create a transistor that can *detect* a single photon.

Re:NOT Uncrackable - false

[Birdie-PL]

Quantum cryptography, even in it simplest form (scheme BB73, from Bennett and Brassard) is unbreakable, even using unlimited computational power, both classical and quantum.

In short, you can create a key for one time pad (which BTW is proven to be the only unbreakable classical crypto scheme) in such a way that no-one knows it.
As for eavesdropping - you can detect if someone is eavesdropping / attacking your scheme during key exchange, so you simply can restart it. Restarting mean that the attacker can DOS your key exchange - i.e. produce noise so you won't be able to agree on the key. Thus you will not be able to encrypt any data. But you will not leak any, either.

What's more - there exist some solutions for the DOS problem - one can enhance the exchanged knowledge is a way that minimizes the chance of attacker to possess it too. But these are probabilistical schemes, not fully safe. And rather impractical as they require much redundancy and communication.

If you have mathematical background, see http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~crepeau/CRYPTO/Biblio-QC. html for further references.

missed the point?

[kresmoi]

I have read "The Code Book" but don't have my copy with me, so please correct me if I am wrong. The impression I got from the section on Quantum Cryptography was that single photons would be used to securely transmit a full length random encryption key, where an eavesdropper could be detected and/or avoided. This key could then be used in a type of encryption known as a Vigenere Square, which (according to The Code Book) has been mathematically proven to be unbreakable when used with a full length random key. In this way, the LED in the article could be one component of a truly uncrackable encryption system. You still need a viable means of long range transmission and detection to make it practical though...

Re:NOT Uncrackable - false

[hephro]

Quantum cryptography, even in it simplest form (scheme BB73, from Bennett and Brassard) is unbreakable, even using unlimited computational power, both classical and quantum.

Do you mean BB84? I haven't seen security proofs for other protocols yet.

see http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~crepeau/CRYPTO/Biblio-QC. html

But beware of any claims about quantum bit commitment :-)

-Hein

Random number generation

[nairolF]

This SPED (single photon emmiting diode - we may expect this name to become nearly as commonplace as LED one day) also provides a cool way to implement a true random number generator.

The basic idea is that, as far as we know, the only TRUE source of randomness in nature is the collapse of a quantum wavefunction. Basically, the state of a quantum system is really the superpostion of several "pure" states. When the system is measured (I won't go into what constitutes a "measurement", that's a never-ending debate), this superposition collapses into one of these pure states. Which state this will be is, as far as we can tell, entirely random. Only the probability of each outcome is known in advance. Besides this, all other physical processes seem to be deterministic. So any true randomness in nature must have its origin in the collapse of some wavefunction.

How do we exploit this? Fire a single photon at a beamsplitter, then measure whether the photon has been transmitted or reflected. The outcome will be random in a true sense, the probability of each outcome will depend on the beamsplitter. But, importantly, there will be no correlation between successive outcomes if the transmission : reflection ratio of the beamsplitter is 1:1. If our two detectors (one for transmission, one for refection) aren't perfect and lose a photon, we can always fire another photon, so this should even work with imperfect detectors, like a CCD.

This can now be implemented, all we need is a SPED, a beamsplitter and two CCDs. These can all be made pretty small, so might even fit on a chip, and hey presto! You got yourself a little hardware random bit generator. The only problem left is that the thing must be cooled to some pretty low temperaure.

I've always been of the opinion that a random number generator should be hardware, not software.

Key, not the message

[ph117]

I could be completely mistaken, but you're suggesting the message is exchanged using this method, rather than the key. I thought the method was used in order to allow two parties to exchange a series of bits that could be used as a one time pad. This one time pad can then be used to encrypt the message, which can be sent by carrier pigeon if so desired.

If a third party is eavesdropping, their interference could be detected and the process restarted (to generate a new one time pad that the sender and receiver know hasn't been intercepted).

Of course, one time pads are only uncrackable provided that they are generated using a truly random source, and are never reused.

Detecting a single photon using FET

[CatherineCornelius]

So far they've figured out how to emit one photon, but they don't know how to read it.

Andrew Shields and others released a paper last year on possible use of normal FET technology in conjunction with a layer of "nanometer-sized quantum dots" for the detection of a single photon. I'm not sure that the method he demonstrates there could be adapted to commercial scale crypto, but it certainly seems to be a possibility.

I'm no expert, and Shields' comments on problems of attenuation in fiber transmitters may render the unique selling point of quantum crypto (that snooping can be detected) moot, but it still looks very promising for such a young idea.

Quantum crypto already cracked

[karlm]

So, look for my previous post under this story if you're not sure how quantum key exchange works. I have a brief summer at the bottom of this post to check if you and I are thinking about the same implementation of quantum key exchange. Adi Shamir (I think) came up with a way to break quantum crypto key exchange based on polarised single photons.

Okay, so it's only an attack against uncareful implementations. The easiest way of explaining it is the case of tapping a fiber optic line. You splice th fiber optic line and let all of Alice and Bob's photons pass through your detector. You inject your own polarized photons back towards the transmitter when the transmitter isn't transmitting. (You need to predict the timing of the transmitted photons, but that should be relatively easy.) You look at the polarisation of the photons you sent out after they reflect of the internals of the transmitter. This should leak information about the polarisation of the photon just sent or the photon about to be sent, or if the system is transitioning to send a photon in a different polarisation. Most designers wouldn't think to put a single photon detector in the transmitter, becuase they don't expect photons to be comming back at the transmitter, or assume such things would be inoocuous. Of course, there's always a man-in the middle attack if you don't ahve a good signature algorithm.

A brief summary is that you have a detector that can be set up to correctly detect rectilinearly polarized light or correctly detect diagonally polarized light. One person sends single photons randomly polarized in one of the 4 directions the other person is looking for. Afterward, they figure out which photons were correctly measured and those mesurements are the key bits. Like I said, I explained it better somewhere else in this article.

Look who's a connasirrrrr of trolling now!

[Anonymous Coward]

Trolling isn't about subtle satire. It's about people not spotting blatant satire. What's funny about people being taken in by a subtle hoax? Well?

Re:1 photon? That doesn't seem like a bright idea.

[fatphil]

Not necessarily if there's external synchronisation, so that the recipient knows when a photon has been dropped. A dropped photon will then be as useless to a MITM as an intercepted (thus changed) photon. However, I'm curious why you want only one photon - how to you play with quantum entanglement if you've only got one photon?
The article was light on facts to say the least. Unless there's some form of Quantum Encryption which doesn't rely on quantum entanglement that I don't know of???

FP.

Re:1 photon? That doesn't seem like a bright idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks for the insightful comment. i'm sure the brilliant scientists that devised this scheme NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT THAT.

leave it to jdrogers to point out the glaring oversight. thanks man.

since i'm sure you know just as much or more about quantum electrodynamics than the people that came up with this.

loser.

Excellent satire...

[Astfgl]

...I almost spilled beer in my cornflakes! :-))

Not Encryption

[gweihir]

This is not Encryption. It is not about breaking anything. This is a channel that upposedly does not to allow evasdropping. A completely different thing!

MagiQ - actually building quantum products

[favalora]

Hello - there's a company in NYC and the Boston area actually designing quantum encryption technology for eventual products. They have a team of heavy-hitters in the quantum information world. They're called MagiQ Technologies, Inc.

I know their CEO, and it sounds like they're doing very promising work. They've been pretty quiet about their stuff, but think that it's an example of the real-world applications of this type of technology.

Gregg Favalora - CTO, Actuality Systems, Inc. - The 3-D Display Guys

Particle or wave?

[LeBain]

Does it emit the single photon as a particle or a wave?

Re:Particle or wave?

[AndrewRUK]

Both. All photons (and everything else) is always both a particle and a wave, simultaneously.

Single photons don't get very far

[Nygard]

I have the same reaction to this as I do to the articles about quantum entanglement.

How the heck are you going to get a single photon to go large distances without getting absorbed? Even in space, if the photon hits a single atom, it will get absorbed, causing an electron to be excited. When the electron "leaps" back to a ground state, emitting a photon, isn't this a new photon?

I would think that this would lose any previously known polarization. If I'm wrong, please explain how a photon retains its "identity" even after being absorbed.

Imagine that this isn't in space, but in the atmosphere. Plenty of matter to interfere with long-range transmission of individual photons. Fiber-optic cables? I dunno.

recent progress

[Hadlock]

there's been alot of progress in LED's as of late, when are we going to see low heat, high light emitting diodes that rival incandecent or florecent lightbulbs? they'd last a lifetime (well, 3 years), and can be of nearly any wavelength...

You're not getting heisenberg's principle

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

it is a TECHNOLOGICAL LIMITATION, it is NOT a fundamental law of physics as you seem to be implying. The only problem is that we need to find something significantly lighter than a photon to detect that photon.

Image the situation like this : we're trying to detect an elephant by throwing elephants at it. Is it any wonder the originial elepant will respond to our "measuring" ? That is the real reason for Heisenberg's principle.

The second we detect an indirect way to detect photons (let's say we detect the gravitational surge) this law will apply only in a much more limited form. There are more than sufficient fields surrounding photons, we just need to build scanners sensitive enough to detect fields that weak (of course without amplifying them)

Single photon detectors are available.

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, passing keys over single photons has been shown experimentally.

Single photon detectors are off the shelf items - try a google search.

Reliably emitting a single photon is a big deal to the folks that care about this stuff.

No

[epepke]

Many people confuse the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle with quantum entanglement. They're both part of QM, but they aren't the same view of the universe. You could be picky and say that the Uncertainty Principle is an obvious result of basic quantum principles, but it's also the result of some numbers that describe the way our universe is scaled. Anyway, it doesn't say the same thing in the same way.

Public channel, verified identity

[CatherineCornelius]

Actually, you can spoof the two sides. We would break the fiber between Alice and Bob. Handle the negotiation like Bob would when talking to Alice, and similarly handle the negotiation with Bob like Alice would.

Quantum cryptography scenarios normally assume that there exists a public channel upon which Alice and Bob can communicate without the information they communicate being corrupted. The quantum channel is only used for sending uncollapsed wave packets from Alice to Bob, which Bob then collapses in a random manner. They then use the public channel to verify that an untampered communication of data occurred. They just rinse and repeat until the shared key is transmitted.

It's one thing to intercept a closed channel and substitute bad data, quite another to jam a public channel (a radio broadcast, for instance, or a voice call). You could always verify identity using a few bits from the good old one time pad :)

As soon as Alice and Bob are able to confer on the public channel, Eve's intervention will be evident, and they'll just try again until they are able to establish an untampered quantum channel and Alice can communicate the shared key to Bob.

Ah, the wonders of the word "troll"...

[Anonymous Coward]

...where one can cover for their own blatant stupidity by claiming, "I was just trolling. You believed I thought that? Joke's on you."