New Quantum Cryptography Speed Record

Roland Piquepaille writes "Physicists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have established a world's speed record for 'unbreakable' encryption with their cryptographic system based on the transmission of single photons. With this kind of method, messages cannot be intercepted without detection, meaning transmission is always safe. The NIST 'quantum key distribution' (QKD) system was used between two buildings located 730 meters apart for transmitting a stream of photons at a rate of 1 million bits per second. While it might not look very fast, its 100 times faster than with previous quantum distribution systems. This overview contains more details and references about information theory."

Comments

Re:Always?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, but if it were possible to eavesdrop without detection, implications for physics would be just as great as for cryptology.

Ya cannae change the laws of physics
- Scotty, Chief Engineer

Re:Nothing that haven't been done before

[__aagctu1952]

It's just like morse code, just waaaaaaaaaaaay faster!

Nah, it's like morse code, only if you look at what you receive the probability wave collapses and the cat dies. This means quantum cryptography uses up a heck of a lot of cats, and this is why there's a limit on its practical usability and speed in the real world...

*cough*

Unless you are talking one-time pads....

[Halo-]

The whole "unbreakable" thing is a little bit of a misnomer. Yes, you can detect if someone observes the transimission of the key, but that doesn't mean the encryption is unbreakable. In fact, it's not really encryption at all. It's simply a fancy type of secure, out-of-band key exchange. Once the key is exchanged, the parties will generally use it to key a symmetric algorithm like 3DES or AES. (At which point the encryption is only as strong as those algorithms...)

I realize I'm being painfully pendantic here, but when the self-proclaimed nerds start abusing a term, the general public is going to be hopelessly confused. (Think the whole hacker/cracker thing...)

Quantum key exchange is unbeleivably cool, but doesn't guanentee secure crypto. It just takes one of the weakest links in the chain, and makes it the strongest.

Hang on...

[m00nun1t]

I don't understand all this stuff about quantam cryptography. Let's get to the core of the issue:

Can it help me download pr0n faster or not?

What about keyloggers and stuff?

[joda]

Even thought that in theory, the encrypted messages (or whatever is sent) can't be read, you still have the problems before and after encryption.
Especially these days with worms and trojans affecting even the most _secure_ environments (*bad memories about some american nuclear power plant*). You can expect someone somewhere to get some spyware or keylogging-thingie onto a sender or reviever's system. (or sometimes even enough with just getting it onto the network on each end in question.)
I recall visiting a webshop somewhere who sold a small (read less than half an inch) plug, which you put in between the keyboard and the comp, which could log several megs of typed in text. Later it's just to harvest ...

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but if you can't trust your coworkers 130% in these cases, you're still toast unless you put the machine (and yourself) in a vault and throw away the key. /joda

Re:QC and evesdropping

[OblongPlatypus]

But if you sent "attack at dawn", then realized an enemy had been eavesdropping, wouldn't you just attack at dusk instead?

Then again, the enemy would know that you knew he was eavesdropping, so he might anticipate that...

Somehow, this reminds me of Vizzini.

the weakest link in the chain

[WormholeFiend]

is human.

while it's true that cryptography like this improves security, those encrypted messages are still transmitted between people, and people are not corruption-proof.