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Quasars Used for Encryption
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"
We use really fast neutron stars which generate radio waves in order to encrypt our content?
So if someone has a list of all quasars and their radio frequencies, can't they brute force the message and break it in, what, 20 seconds?
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All one time pads are recorded from random data. You record a long stream of truly random input, then make two copies of the recording. Tne sender gets one copy, the receiver gets the other. Starting at the beginning of the pad, the sender uses each bit of the pad exactly once, then discards it. When the sender runs out of bits, he can not send any more data. The receiver decrypts decrypts likewise, discarding each pad bit after it has been used once. As long as the sender and receiver start with the same pads and don't skip or reuse any bits, they stay in syncronization.
Many perfectly good one time pads are drawn off of data "that anyone can record." For example, many pads are created from atmospheric noise. Anyone can record the same data, but unless you know exactly where and when the recording was done, it is computationally infeasible to record all possibilities, let alone brute force them.
There are many, many quasars that we record in the sky. All of them give off constant streams of random data. So it would be computationally intractable to record all possibilities or brute force a particulr message, because the attacker would have to know exactly which quasar was recorded, and exactly which instant the recording began. He would also have to know exactly which bit of the pad the sender was on when the sender started sending the message that he intercepted. All theoretically possible, but computationally intractable.
The preceding comments reflect the author's personal opinion and are public domain, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
For one thing they are just using the data to create random numbers .. i.e. all.
Logic being that, any random number we create is *not* random. i.e all.
And most (all??) encryption (RSA onwards) is based on random numbers.
Even if there is only one quasar the freq of the signal at any time would be very random indeed. Even if it is as created using known scientific functions, chaos theory predict that we wont be able to regenerate the same any time soon.
For that matter, they could even use any of the natural process to generate random numbers -
Amp of any specfic freq from our dear sun, to , say the power of wind blowing outside itself, would make a good random number
They just chose an exotic one. i.e. all
rajmohan_h@yahoo.com
There doesn't seem to be anything special about a quasar here... essentially all they are saying is that large amounts of random data can be used for quick and easy one time pad encryption, which to my knowledge is unbreakable, although I am not particularly well versed in cryptography...
For those that don't know, the idea behind a one time pad is that your key is random, and the same size as the data being sent. For example, if binary data is sent, simple xor encryption can be used as follows
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
tada
One time pads have two major problems
1. Both parties need the key.
2. The key is large, thus cumbersome to carry around and likely to be discovered.
Problem 2 can be solved, while losing some randomness, by using a popular book as the pad. Then you could just head down to the library and check out catcher in the rye, or whatever book you agreed upon beforehand, and begin decoding.
I suppose that this could be used in conjunction with public key cryptography, so that public key cryptography is used to encrypt the coordinates of the quasar you want to use... but I really don't see why you need the quasar at all. Also, aren't there only 12,000 of them visible? If this technology became widespread and quasars were persistently used as sources of random data... someone with enough resources could just monitor them all and decrypt any data transmitted by checking it against all the data received from pulsars at that time.
What, lava lamps aren't good enough anymore?
They are indeed unbreakable, with a theoretical proof of unbreakability -- in the land of spherical horses, where you're allowed to make huge assumptions.
One underappreciated assumption about one-time-pads is that the recipient will (and can!) destroy the keying material after use so thoroughly that the adversary can't reconstruct it. There are several other issues, of which key distribution is one of the easiest. Just put a 500GB external drive in the diplomatic bag once and you've covered communications for a long time.
Here's the problem. The only things secret here are which quasar (13, 14 bits of uncertainty), when the sampling started (?? There won't be very many possible seconds that the adversary has to scan but sampling could start on a fraction of a second), and the sampling algorithm (but you have to assume in crypto that the adversary knows your algorithms). It's going to be easier to brute-force than a 6-word Diceware passphrase unless atmospheric effects somehow make the quasar signal look different everywhere on earth.
...than using the noise from your soundcard disconnected mic?
It is just as random and does not require a radiotelescope the size of a small house...
If Quasars are correlated photon emitters, then perhaps they can be used for encryption in the same way as quantum entanglement is used already?
All you have to do is ensure that both commnuicating parties sample ENOUGH of the particles arriving at earth, and presumably enough of them will be entangled such that any other observer would have a statistically observable effect on their communication, i.e. detectable as an interceptor.
OK, that's sounds hopeless.
How about if there was one day found to be a way of communicating via entanglement? Then perhaps quasars might well be great sources of entangled particles.
Remember, science is not advanced by claims of "Impossible!", but by "I wonder if..."
From the article:
/dev/random, which, although influenced by random events, is largely computed using pseudo-random processes. The data stream from each quasar would be broadcast from a single collection point for all to use, but this to me brings up trust issues. Would you trust that single point of contact? Additionally, with enough horsepower, someone could simply record the bytestream coming from the quasar, and perform an off-line brute-force attack on any encrypted data with relative ease.
Umeno believes astronomical cryptography could appeal to anyone who requires high-security communications. He adds that the method does not require a large radio antenna or that the communicating parties be located in the same hemisphere, as radio signals can be broadcast over the internet at high speed.
Basically, he just wants to use the quasars as a source of true randomness, instead of
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