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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."
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."
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.