BBN Announces Functional Quantum Encrypted Network

anzha writes "BBN Technologies has announced that under DARPA's Quantum Network Project to have built in conjunction with Harvard University the world's first functional quantum encrypted network. This is probably funded under DARPA's Quantum Information Science and Technology Program."

Comments

Re:Little more explanation please

[14erCleaner]

Essentially, they use the photons to transmit a one-time pad, which is then used to encrypt the actual message (as I understand the press release, anyway). They notice if anybody intercepts their key transmission, and then don't use it at all.

This scheme might be subject to denial-of-service attacks by eavesdroppers, but I'm sure they've thought of that in their network design. Probably they can send the keys via alternate routes in case of interruption of a link.

Re:Patents.. UCK

[pedantic bore]

Aren't at least some of the widely used security algorithms proven to be likewise unbreakable without changing the laws of, mmmm, mathematics?

None, except for one-time pads (which have other problems). For example, many schemes depend on the fact that it's impractical to factor large numbers. The truth is that nobody knows how to factor large numbers today, but it's also true that nobody knows how hard this problem really is. Perhaps someone clever will figure out how to do it tomorrow... and in the meanwhile, someone already has figured out how to factor large numbers using quantum computing. Nobody has built a quantum computer large enough to run the algorithm, but once they do, you can kiss all these schemes goodbye.