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Code for Unbreakable Quantum Encryption
An anonymous reader writes "ITO is running a story on NIST's latest quantum encryption key generation. From the article: 'Raw code for "unbreakable" quantum encryption has been generated at record speed over optical fiber at NIST. The work is a step toward using conventional high-speed networks such as broadband Internet and local-area networks to transmit ultra-secure video for applications such as surveillance.'"
People really need to quit referring to anything as "unbreakable" or 100% secure. It's never going to happen. Just as making anything idiot proof, they will always build a better idiot. Saying it's unbreakable is just going to challenge someone to do it.
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If it can be decrypted its not unbreakable. Unbreakable encryption is easy, just not that usefull if you ever want access to what you encrytped.
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Ok, maybe I missed something back when I took QM in college, but photons are the only particle of light, aren't they? They are not the only electromagentic particle, but are the only constituents of the light we see. Or has the universe become even stranger and no one told me?
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That's like giving a DEA agent in Columbia a "bulletproof" vest.
What about the noise of some of the photons being lost (absorption)? The system has to be stable against it. Ergo, one can hide herself under the noise threshold.
PS. It has been 20 years since my quantum mechanics exams.
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Well, the point is that your pad can be sent at a time when you have secure communication - such as on an USB drive in face to face contact. Then, you can send the message later at any time without secure communication. It's a method of shifting the moment that messages have to be sent to be a time when you can guarantee security.
The reason you transmit the pad instead of the actual data is that the properties of the system don't prevent evesdropping, they only make it detectable. If you transmitted the actual data over the "secure" stream, someone could still intercept it. You'd know that they intercepted it, but by then it would be too late to do anything about it. However, if you transmit the pad over the secure stream you can know which bits were intercepted prior to encrypting the data and can remove those bits from the pad. NOTE: I see someone already posted something similar after I started posting, but I think this version is a bit easier to understand for someone who isn't used to quantum cryptography.
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It could be argued that "susceptible to DOS attacks" is present in all crypto systems, that uses public (or not so public, for that matter) transmission systems - it is trivial to distort a message regardless of whether it is encrypted or not. What you view as a vice, I would characterize as a virtue. Now, at least, you know when Eve is trying to eavesdrop.
but it's quantum, so you can't really be sure it's secure until it's already been sent.. or something
But seriously, what would stop someone intercepting the key, then resending it? If the original transmitter can send the key, and the receiver can receive it, why can't a repeater-station type device in the middle read the key, then send out a new duplicate?
which is totally what she said