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A Working, Quantum-Encrypted Intranet
192939495969798999 writes "This article points out how BBN, developers of ARPANET, have actually created a quantum-encrypted intranet that serves pages to a small group of research scientists. I firmly believe this is as significant as the very first internet transmission some years back. If the technology is working and 100% secure, how long until it makes its way at least into government websites? This might be the end of the hacked by Chinese index pages!"
Reader Kent adds "A New York based company, MagiQ
Technologies, has begun selling units for
commercial use while a group in Europe recently made the first quantum encrypted
bank transaction in Vienna, Austria - April 2004. But the Boston network -
though limited to three locations - is believed to be the first Internet-integrated
system
that runs
continuously
between multiple distant locations."
Just because a computer uses encryption, doesn't mean that it is unhackable.
BAH! , Until they have me beaming back and forth from my bed to my computer I'm not giving quantum computing a dime.
How will this stop worms or web-sites getting 'hacked'? It isn't even designed to! It is designed to stop sniffing or the modification of data while it is on the pipe. I think the poster needs get a clue.
Actually, you have literally no idea of how a quantum encrypted network works. What's interesting about the quantum encrypted network is not whether it keeps password cracking from L33T hackers, but how it makes sniffing along the connection either impossible, or impossible without being noticeable, depending on the implementation.
Tonight I'm adding "Quantum Network Engineer" to my resume...
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Don't miss this bit on how the EU is planning to use Quantum Crypto to subert and avoid the U.S.'s rampant digital espionage.
tcd004
...from pigeon-based indexing to using cats?
this doestn mean that a buggy iis connected to the quantum network will be any more secure if it would be connected by rj45 or fibre ethernet.
this means only, that man-in-the-middle attack cant be done, or data during the flow cant be altered without recognization.
this is just a new transport media but not making the services and clients at both ends any more secure.
think of this as an ssl/ssh/vpn replacement.
if you have bugs in the rest of your software/hardware ssl/ssh/vpn/quantum cant help either.
nuff said
Where do I get this nothing stuff?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Now I understand! when word was randomly messing up my settings and files, it was because I was viewing them.
:-)
so it WAS a feature, not a bug.
who d'have thunk that MS had such advanced SECURITY tech...
There was a good discussion about quantum crypto on The Cryptography Mailing List last month.
it's the key to the encryption that they have to make sure isn't tampered with or eavesdropped on. say the key is 100 bits long. after the transmission of the key, the sender and reciever compare, say, 50 of these bits publicly. if the receiver's bits are different than the sender's they know someone has tampered with it (since any measurement by an outsider will alter the state) and they throw that key away. if they are exactly the same, they know no one listened in and they can use the other 50 bits as the actual key.
they send the encrypted data only after they are sure no one else has the key.
Its because of how quantum encryption works. Basically, I'll make an explanation here for everyone. We'll have two computers, Alice and Bob. Alice sends a bunch of *RANDOMLY* polarized photons, each polarized RANDOMLY with one of two polarizers--up-down, or diagonal. So you could have one of the following four photons: / \ | --
Bob at the other end RANDOMLY switches between filters, and thus gets only about 3/4 of the photons right (this is a little long and thus I won't do the math here). So he reads off, over an insecure line, which filters he used when. Alice tells him when he was right and when he was wrong. The series of bits that he got right will be used for a one time pad cipher. However, Eve, the evesdropper, can't get the one-time pad! Why? Because she and Bob will have used a different sequence of polarizers, and thus she would have gotten some of the one-time pad wrong. Plus, when Eve measured any photon along the line, it would change its polarization, so therefore before doing the encrypted transmission, Alice could send a portion of the one-time pad to Bob. If any of it changed, then obviously Eve was on the line.
Does anyone know what changes are needed to the current fibre infrastructure to support quantum encryption? can you hook two boxes up at either end of a random cable? what about repeaters, etc, interfering with the signal?
You can measure _some_ in quantum mechanics things without changing them, and that's the way these systems work. If I send you a horizontally polarized photon then if you measure it along the horizontal direction you won't change its state, but if you measure along any other direction you will. These systems work by the receiver measuring in one of two possible directions selected at random. The receiver and the sender then tell each other what direction the measurements were done so that they can decide what information is valid and what isn't.
An eavesdropper will inevitably destroy some of the valid information which will introduce noise into the sent signal. The sender and receiver can detect this noise and deduce that they are being eavesdropped on.
Incidentally, the security of the most common scheme has been proven mathematically by Shor and Preskill.
Bob was sent to the store by Alice for polarized one-time pads but as usual he came back with the wrong filter. She should have just sent Eve to begin with.