Slashdot Mirror
Quantum Cryptography Gets Nanotube Boost
c1ay writes "In an article at the ScienceDaily News it is reported that two researchers at the University of Rochester have discovered a new property of carbon nanotubes, ideal photon emission. "The emission bandwidth is as narrow as you can get at room temperature," says Lukas Novotny, professor of optics at Rochester and co-author of the study. Such a narrow and steady emission can make such fields as quantum cryptography and single-molecule sensors a practical reality. RSA and Elliptic Curve wouldn't stand a chance against this unbreakable encryption."
When will they have a quantum encryption cracking competition? Go Team Slashdot!
You can still brute-force a one-time pad.
Maybe so, but he still won't talk. All our one-time pads are equiped with a special cyanide-filled tooth to bite down on, just in case they are captured.
They kinda suck as straws. Well, they don't really suck, but thats the problem.
You can indirectly "brute force" break a one-time pad, however. It works like this:
1) Intercept the message.
2) Go to the person who sent the message.
3) Beat him repeatedly in pain-sensitive areas until he agrees to give you the one-time pad.
4) Profit?
Voila! One-time pad.... broken!
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
Back when high-bit encryption was becoming popular, there was a great effort on the part of the government to control its use, especially the "export" of encryption technology.
With the advent of unbreakable quantum encryption, we are clearly in for more of the same. If you think the line at the arirport is long now, just wait until security starts searching people for nanotubes. Me, I'm seriously considering driving everywhere.