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Quasars Used for Encryption

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the grain-of-salt dept.

space_mongoose writes "According to this NewScientistTech story, intergalactic radio signals from quasars could emerge as an exotic but effective new tool for securing terrestrial communications against eavesdropping"

3 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. Woohoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    Now when I'm having a private conversation with some aliens I'll know that Bush isn't listening... woopeedoo

  2. Re:One time pads by jamesh · · Score: 2, Funny

    Additionally, there may be filtering of the signal to select various frequency ranges, which would change the random sequence it produced (although may not matter if you could capture the whole signal anyway, but you'd need to know it to actually do the decryption)

    Anyway, once i've figured out all the parameters, all I need to do is send a box away from the origin of the quasar faster than the speed of light, so that it can effectively go back in time relative to the signal and capture it.

    I believe that this will be the big outcome of faster than light travel - breaking quasar keyed encryption.

    (kidding of course :)

  3. Re:uh by Threni · · Score: 2, Funny

    >unencrypted data: 10110000
    >pad data : 10111001
    >
    >xor the pad against the key and you get
    >
    >encrypted data : 00001001
    >
    >xor the same pad against the *encrypted* key again to get
    >
    >original data : 10110001

    The final step is to subtract 00000001 from the decrypted data...