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Growing Diamonds for Better Information Security
hip2b2 writes "NetworkWorld is running an article that describes how a University of Melbourne research group is developing technology to make fiber optics communications more secure. The technology is based on Quantum Cryptography principles and requires than absolutely only one photon gets sent at any given time. Today, fiber optic systems do not send one photon at a time. They only approximate it. This makes current systems unsuitable for their secure communications technology. Therefore, the group uses artificially grown diamonds to achieve this."
...But is it SO hard to proof read this stuff.IANAGN (i am not a grammar nazi) but I got up 5 mins. ago and saw that from across the room :)
Quantum Cryptography Field will be soon swarmed with females. INGENIUS! University of Melbourne research group just came up with an answer for the problem on this total sausage party we have going on with CS department.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
Grown diamonds are literally vaporware - but chemical vapor deposition is the interesting and relatively cheap way to do it. The old cheap way to make artificial diamonds was to blow things up (DuPont method), but the optical properties were no good.
Here's the actual University of Melbourne article from four days ago.
Common sense is not so common
Will it not increase DOS attacks, if the attacker's aim is not the information theft?
hilarious
Now I can buy some of these cables without my wife hounding me for justification.
There's a few companies growing gem quality diamonds. Gemesis, Chatham Created Gems and Apollo. Gradually as production increases for industrial and jewelery purposes the market value of diamonds as gems will decrease.
Not that diamonds really have much value as gems anyway, have you ever tried to sell a second hand diamond ring?
Deleted
Er, "artificial" diamonds are just as real as "real" diamonds. It's a face-centered cubic carbon crystal lattice whether transported up from the mantle by geological forces or manufactured.
DeBeers will give you all sorts of fud saying that they will eventually have a process for telling the difference between the two, but they won't. Ever.
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BMO
Many teenagers working a crap supermarket job remember the number 1 rule: steal from the store, you're in trouble. Well with that in mind, it's safe to say the manager of this project would be packing a serious Uzi.
Czech language for absolute beginners
DeBeers will give you all sorts of fud saying that they will eventually have a process for telling the difference between the two, but they won't. Ever.
Actually, they do: excavated diamonds have more lattice defects and impurities than manufactured diamonds.
DeBeers will give you all sorts of fud saying that they will eventually have a process for telling the difference between the two, but they won't. Ever.
While I have no love for De Beers and they do spread a TON of FUD out there, I've read several trade publications about the amount of nickle and/or hydrogen traces in these synthetics that will give away it's origin...though not in every case of course. This is independent of De Beers also, but they certainly have a vested interest in finding this out.
But to say they won't ever have a process for telling the difference is a little short-sighted don't you think?
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
First-generation products will be for very secure transmission of secure datasets, like a bank's daily offsite backup, but could serve the commodity networking market in about 20 years, Huntington said. It's a low transfer rate but idea is not to send data [this way] but the encryption key so you don't need the same transfer rate. One of the consortium's goals is to enhance that as much as possible. If you can securely transfer the key you can transfer the rest of that data over a standard telco line, he said.
So let me get this straight. The article implies: 1) I can build a secure fiber line between two points and to transfer a key, one photon at a time; and 2) once the key is transferred, I can then use standard telco lines. If I am going to the trouble to build a custom fiber optic network between two points that works with diamond lasers, why would I use telco lines? Conversely, if I don't build my own point to point fiber for key transmission then I run the risk of man-in-the-middle stealing my keys since the middle will have repeaters which can regenerate these 'secure photons'.
I say to you, this makes no sense. Why not just put 52 keys on a thumb drive or CD (one for each week of the year) and send it via a secure courier and then use telco lines for transmission? This looks like yet another ruse to get research money under the guise of quantum cryptography.
Consider the world. Consider your picture of the world. If they are different, your picture is wrong.
Money is flowing into quantum crypto because courier-based kex is insufficient. Also, QC is intrinsically point-to-point since there's no current way to reliably switch photons. This allows you to take two black boxes and connect them with a cable 20 miles long, and you're 100% guaranteed to be able to get information from A to B without anyone being able to find it out. Could be good for, say, teleconferencing between the white house and the pentagon.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
There are several ways to tell the difference between lab- and geologically made diamonds arising from the lack/presense of structural and chemicalimpurities.
Remember the four 'C's: cut, colour, clarity, and carat weight. Lab-made diamonds can now be produced with rather high carat weight, necessary to cut them into gemstones (30-70% of the material is removed in cutting). They are now being grown large enough to be cut as well as any diamond; so 'cut' and 'carat weight' can be the same for the two.
The crystal structure of laboratory diamonds can be made with few gross imperfections, causing the clarity to be quite high. In general, the types of lattice imperfections, decreasing clarity, are rather different for lab and geological diamonds, making it not too difficult to distinguish between the two when there are structural imperfections present. Only the very best crystals in each class would be hard to identify---those without many obviously lab-made or geologically-made lattice imperfections.
The 'c' that makes lab-diamonds not very marketable today is 'colour.' The colour of a diamond arises from natural or artificial chemical impurities. Natural diamonds have an enormous variety of colour because of the variety of (chemical) environments in which they are formed. Artificial diamonds tend to be produced in labs where they are all produced similarly, without much variety in (or any good way to control) the colour. Indeed, most artificial diamonds today are an intense orange-yellow colour because of the nitrogen introduced during processing. A natural orange-yellow diamond could be very expensive because of its rarity, but the market for such 'fancy' diamonds is substantially smaller than for white/clear diamonds.
Anyway, it will be a long time before you couldn't tell the difference. And when lab-diamonds can be made with arbitrary colour, size, and crystal strucuture, the easy way to tell the difference is the LACK of any natural imperfections.
Then "manufacture" these impurities in then. Make this cartel suffer as they have caused those they pillage to suffer. Just like the oil industry in some countries.
The point of building/using a quantum channel (the fibre line) is to solve the key distribution problem, it cannot be used to send data. Why? Firstly in the protocol used for checking for eavesdroppers you end up discarding around 3/4 of the photons sent, with no way of predicting which ones, and secondly you really need to be sending random data to make it completly secure. The result is both parties end up with a random key, and you know with absolute certainty that no-one else has it. Compare with your "use a courier and a CD" method (which some places do currently use), where you cannot know if someones managed to make of copy of the CD during transport, and also cannot guarantee CD has been kepy securly (during the year (in your suggestion) its kept).
Once you have your key though, the can use the Vernam cipher (one time pad) which is provably unbreakable, to send the actual data over a standard telco line, copletly securely.
I suggest you read about quantum cryptography more (wikipedias probably good).. pretty much the entire point of it is that you cannot just intercept and resend the photons without being detected. What you can do, if each laser pulse actually contains two identical photons is split one off and keep/measure that, without being detected. Hence the importance of single photon sources (which this research is in).
As i understand it - the idea is to build a point to point connection between two boxes, and transfer the key really slowly, so that noone can eavesdrop ?
If something can be read, and written - it can be copied. It might be harder using this technology, but as soon as it goes global - and the devices capable of generating a single photon impulse and reading an impulse like that are available (even if for a horrific price) the strategy goes to hell.
If someone is capable of listening on a optic fiber in the present day - and im fairly certain there arent many people like that out there - whats to stop them from eavesdropping on a fiber such as this ?
To be honest - im getting the idea this is kind of pointless.
But i must say that being able to transmitt and read one photon at a time gives spectacular performance if you can controll the baud rate better (and if you can filter out and read a single photon - id say that you can).
I see nice perspectives for this technology in the future - maybe we will be able to fully use the optic fibers we already have (or get new ones, fazillions times faster).
Using this for cryptology - if you can even call it that - in this case seems just absurd.
I don't know that I'd call diamonds an "investment" when the price is related in large part to the De Beers monopolistic practices. Should their monopoly fade, so too will diamonds' sparkle as an investment commodity fade. Hmmmm, I think I'll google around now for info on whether diamonds actually offer any sort of return on investment. As an aside, if the diamond is attached to a ring attached to a girl, it's 100% certain to cost you money in the long run ... well, in the short run too.
OK, quick googling: no dice. Except this is amusing and interesting. Apparently, without monopoly control, "There are really enough diamonds to give each man, woman and child in the United States a whole cupful." Cite. That doesn't bode well for the time the monopoly falls.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I am curious why the quantum net itself is necessarily slow? It can't just be that 3/4 of the photos are discarded, since a normal fiber optical network already sends many more than 4 photos for each bit of information (don't they?)
Current systems use attenuated lasers.. basically you shine a laser onto a pair of very small holes, and theres only a very small chance of any photons getting through. So on average you'll get between 0.05 and 0.5 (determined by the size of the holes) photons passing through in one pulse. This is all on average though, sometimes you'll get 0, sometimes 1, and rarely 2 (or more). Hence "approximatly" one per pulse.
Are you aiming for 'zen' or 'nonsensical' here? If I can "consider the world" in such a way that I am not really considering my own perception of it, don't I have access to the objective truth already? (Meaning that I would be basically omnipotent, and in no need of philosophical advice from random people on Slashdot.)
(e.g. the 'buyback' may not be cash on the barrelhead, but instead a credit towards a more expensive diamond, making it an upgrade, not a refund. This is very profitable for the jeweller, enabling them to effectively sell you the gem you can afford now vs. a decade ago, to collect additional revenue, while recouping the full 'buyback' price by selling the 'returned' diamond to a new customer at full price)
Appraised price is meaningless and unattainable, making diamonds a poor investment for those outside the trade.
If someone is capable of listening on a optic fiber in the present day - and im fairly certain there arent many people like that out there - whats to stop them from eavesdropping on a fiber such as this ?
As another poster just said, it isn't about them not tapping the line, but rather that you instantly know if someone is listening in. Heck you could even automate it to shut off communication if someone taps the line.
Of course we are talking about easy DoS attacks, but this application is for those who need to communicate security at all costs. NSA, CIA, and military applications where loss of any information is intolerable and they'd rather have the line cut than risk it.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Yes, you can only send as much data as you have key (well securely anyway), but thats not the reason for only using the quantum channel (fibre) for key distribution. The point is that you need to send a completly random string of data down your channel, and then completly at random discard about 3/4 of this. So your left with a shared random key, which you can use as a one time pad to send your actual message.
The whole thing is slow (at the moment) as all the technology is very experimental and you need to send single photons, which can only be done currently using attenuated lasers. Add to that that you have to change polarisation and measurment settings at both ends of the communication between photons, so its not possible to just use standard fibre transmission equipment.
But the decision about what is and isn't discarded also has to be transmitted over your link, otherwise your one-time-pads won't match up, I would think?
Besides, if you're going to transmit as much key as you have message, why use two different lines at all? Why not use some currently "secure" method over the inherently secure quantum line, and not have to send twice as much data?
"Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity." - Anonymous
Bearing in mind of course that with a one-time-pad the key is just as long, bit-wise, as the message...
"Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity." - Anonymous
Ahhh. Good point. Well, it still prevents you from needing to send twice as much data over the quantum line.
This guy's the limit!
"Anyway, it will be a long time before you couldn't tell the difference. And when lab-diamonds can be made with arbitrary colour, size, and crystal strucuture, the easy way to tell the difference is the LACK of any natural imperfections."
Then the highest quality "natural" diamonds would be indistinguishable from manufactured diamonds, then, right? So if I bring in my auntie's flawless 2Ct diamond to be assessed, and it's too perfect, it will be branded "synthetic"? I don't think so.
"Artificial diamonds tend to be produced in labs where they are all produced similarly, without much variety in (or any good way to control) the colour."
That sentence is self contradictory. If manufactured diamonds are all produced similarly, without much variety in color, doesn't that mean that there _is_ control over the color? Add a dopant and instead of making a colorless diamond, it will be _any shade_ of blue, yellow, or green or even pink. We already know how to dope crystals while growing them, it's what makes semiconductors and the computer on your desk possible.
Indeed, fine control over process is what makes diamond films and windows possible. Point to any "imperfection" needed to be a "natural" and I put it to you that it can, and will, be done.
It's no longer "cutting edge" science (pun intended). It's more of an engineering task these days, to make diamonds.
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BMO
Uhm.. why couldn't one intercept that lone photon, send a copy to the attacker, then retransmit it at the other end ? How can the receiving end tell that its communication has been intercepted ? Data is data.. if I intercept your phone or data lines, but make sure the forwarded signal is identical to the original, you have no information upon which to detect my presence. It's a classic black box scenario.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
"Then "manufacture" these impurities in then. Make this cartel suffer as they have caused those they pillage to suffer. Just like the oil industry in some countries."
Indeed, read up on "blood diamonds"
Scary stuff.
I'd much rather have a manufactured diamond than anything that might have come from Sierra Leone.
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BMO
Therefore, the group uses artificially grown diamonds to achieve this."
:^)
Surprisingly, the new diamond cables are still cheaper than Monster Cable.
"Actually, they do: excavated diamonds have more lattice defects and impurities than manufactured diamonds."
And that's what scares the diamond dealers the most. The most expensive diamonds are the ones that are so-called perfect. High quality manufactured diamonds could easily bring down the inflated value of the very top end diamonds.
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BMO
"But to say they won't ever have a process for telling the difference is a little short-sighted don't you think?"
Not really, because as time goes on, manufactured diamonds will simply get better because process control will get better. Better atmospheres, better sputtering, you get the idea. It will get to the point that any color or clarity can be dialed in. Shut the door and hit the start switch.
It's an arms race that the diamond cartel will lose.
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BMO
Indeed, most artificial diamonds today are an intense orange-yellow colour because of the nitrogen introduced during processing.
True, Gemesis makes yellow diamonds. But later this year, Apollo (SWF warning) plans to introduce jewelry featuring its colorless diamonds. De Beers is scared.
I was aiming to point out logical inconsistencies in a person's own subjective world view. How can you reconcile "my idea is great" with "they are not using my idea" other than to assume logical inconsistences (such as: a large rich company with excellent R&D didn't think of it) and/or unlikely assumptions (such as: I'm better than them, that's why they didn't hire me) ?
I also have an issue with your black-and-white statements regarding a person's subjective world view.
How does one reconcile "my idea is great" with "they are not using my idea" other than to assume logical inconsistencies (such as a large, rich company with excellent R&D didn't think of it)?
This is an interesting example. There are many examples in the tech world of "large, rich companies with excellent R&D not think of something". Look at all the "encryption" schemes that have been broken, look at media companies who think it's a good idea to sell DVDs with rootkits. At one time, we could assume that since a "large, rich company" developed a product, that the security on that product was most likely top-notch. Now, the standard response to a new product that has some sort of copy protection, encryption, etc. is "I wonder how many hours/days it will take to break that?"
Your second case is a little harder to find a concrete example that shows it's incorrect but I think I can still build a case. Yes, there are times when people are over-qualified for a position. Or their attitude overwhelms their talents and they rub the interviewer the wrong way. A super-intelligent techie may be "too much" for a team leader or manager who is looking to fill an open position. It's very possible that a "large, rich" company may bring a product to market with a feature set that is not as robust as if they had hired the "top notch guy" that they really couldn't stand during the interview. Not every company employs the "best and brightest".
I am amazed at the collection of knowledge that is presented by the readers of Slashdot. In this discussion, we have had experts on synthetic diamonds weigh-in with their commments. In other dicussions, you will find doctors, lawyers, physicists, network engineers, chemical experts, military experts, etc. It is therefore not unlikely that when a new product is introduced, someone on Slashdot may know more about to how secure that product than the people who designed it or built it. Just because a company brings a product to market does not mean that "large, rich" company has the brightest R&D people on its staff.
First-generation manufactured diamonds were yellow due to nitrogen inclusions. This has been fixed, but people are still making yellow diamonds. Historically they were rarer and more expensive than others, so the nitrogen "problem" was economically valuable.
The next round was that, for reasons I don't understand, manufactured diamonds fluoresce in ultraviolet. Mined diamonds need -rays to do the same thing (fluoresce, that is. "Fluoresce" is a word I'm not going to try to spell twice on my first cup of coffee).
My wife and I both prefer the idea of a diamond created with human ingenuity and skill, even at the same price as a diamond dug up by cruelly mistreated slaves in Sierra Leone.
Well, I can think of one prime example right here.
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
I suppose you could detect it while it's happening and shut down.
I'll say that again and again, until people listen:
Quantum criptography doesn't work!
Well, it does work on the sense that if you have a secure channel, you can use it to validate another channel. It doesn't work on the "do something usefull" sense of the word.
Now, growing diamonds are interesting, and may be usefull for lots of things. But not for quantum criptography, because QC is not usefull.
End of Rant (EOR)
Rethinking email
The idea in quantum cryptography is that reading the photons would actually change them. So Bob would realize upon receipt of the photons that they'd been intercepted and they'd arrange to resend over some other channel.
How they'd communicate this arrangement is another issue.
1) Cryptography, and 2) Useful.
http://xkcd.com/313/
There are basically two types of diamond generating processes. The GE process from the 1960's, and variations of that process using high pressure and high temperature, and Chemical Vapor Deposition. CVD is different. It's low pressure and basically builds diamond as if you were making frost (hot carbon rich gas or plasma condenses on a cold substrate). With CVD you can grow REALLY BIG (really big meaning relative to typical gem sizes) diamond windows and wafers. Indeed, here's a 50 mm white diamond wafer:
e s/image004.jpg
:-D BTW, the 3 firms (gemesis, chatham, apollo) who make gem quality synthetic diamonds laser etch serial numbers into them.
http://www.azom.com/work/8EKVsENqBEG491jQw24l_fil
That impresses me.
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BMO
I don't believe the technology yet exists to manufacture the sort of lattice defects always found in natural diamonds.
I also think even the best artificial diamonds still have some defects, and they are of a sort not found in nature. It is getting to the point where it takes sophisticated equipment to tell the difference, but some people will probably always be willing to pay more for a provably natural diamond, even though the synthetic ones are better in every practical way.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Nobody even cares to encrypt email... I believe the main obstacle to more secure communications is human, not technical.
Quantum cryptography is invulnerable to observation, but it is still vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack in which the attacker pretends to be the destination. From wikipedia:
Quantum cryptography is still vulnerable to a type of MITM where the interceptor (Eve) establishes herself as "Alice" to Bob, and as "Bob" to Alice. Then, Eve simply has to perform QC negotiations on both sides simultaneously, obtaining two different keys. Alice-side key is used to decrypt the incoming message, which is reencrypted using the Bob-side key.
This attack fails if both sides can verify each other's identity.
Identity verification is also vulnerable, and difficult, though not impossible.
No it doesn't. The refractive index of cubic zirconium is 2.176 compared to 2.417 for diamonds.
I can't see how sending one photon at a time will make a system secure. Photons are not necessarily particles, they have wave properties too. So if particle domain analysis doesn't work, just use the wave domain. Have these guys never heard of the double slot experiment?
Oh well, what the hell...
ROFLMAO ;-)
good one
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
I know two people on the team for this project... both of them are female. :P
http://www.xkcd.com/354/
I am more interested in "quantum entanglement" which Einstein referred to as "Spooky Action at a Distance." Assuming one could entangle particles, then manipulate and observe them, one could be theoretically build the ultimate secure communications device. Additionally, this device might possibly work at superluminal speeds. Imagine controlling a space probe on Mars without the 7 minute delay. Who knows what is possible, sub-space communication anyone? :)
As for your "Consider the world" argument. In my brief life, I have observed the world doing quite a few things which do not make sense. If I had to normalize my beliefs and observations with my perceptions of the world with the assumption that the world was always right, I would be in serious trouble.
Additionally, I have studied quantum physics and can even do the math required to derive the Schrodinger wave equations, however I think our theory on how the quantum world operates is flawed. Mankind may learn more (if the ages continue to roll on) and future physicists will look back and laugh at what we believed, just as we look back and laugh at those who believed that space was filled with "ether", that the world was flat, and that there was such a concept as absolute position and velocity in space and time. Relativitely is another concept with hurts my brain, but it appears to be true.
If you have some time, expand upon your "Consider the world..." argument.
Except they won't. Too many useless humans buy the marketing.
... uh ... though so; it's too perfect to be a _real_ diamond"
"Oh, it's beautiful!"
"But, madame, it's man-made."
"So it's not real?"
"That is correct."
"Oh, I
Yeah. Nevermind that it's chemically and structurally identical, save for the lack of defects. It's worth crazy amounts of money to these people _because_ 'real' diamonds are so 'rare' (read: costly in terms of the blood and freedom of some folks out in africanistan -- meant as a slight to the useless marketing-fooled humans, not the nations of africa or any country ending in -stan).
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
It was more of an argument against people who are arrogant enough to have opinions like "my idea for a mars rover is better than nasa's, let's just stick xeons in it" or something. People who don't even consider the possibility that the entity they are criticising has already thought of whatever they propose and dismissed it.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
Dunno if the system will *work* or not, but I'm sure there'll be a lot of law-making bee_ess involved (terrorism / RIAA) that'll bring down the whole system.
;)
PS: Hey! I managed to get RIAA and terrorism together
If you're for some reason stuck on the idea of natural diamonds and want to avoid the blood-price associated with them, you could also look at the growing industry of Canadian "Polar Bear" diamonds
Alpha Doggs Blog .
This is described as "The future of networking as seen through the works of university and other labs"; it's the best name for a tech blog that I've seen in a while.
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
The only jewelry item with liquid commodity value is gold.
You can build the "one time pad" over a few hours and then use it over a few seconds. Basicly, the key needs to be sent fast enough to meet the average demand but the link needs to handle the spikes. There are other constrants; such as if you send both links though the same line then you can suffer a man in the middle attack but if they are on seperate networks then it's much harder.