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Quantum Cryptography Ready For Wide Adoption?
An anonymous reader points us to an interview with the founder of quantum cryptography pioneer MagiQ Technologies. From the article: "Q: When do you think we'll see service providers offer quantum cryptography services to their end-customers? A: This will happen within one year and we'll see fairly wide adoption within the next three years. We are working with big carriers such as Verizon and AT&T as well as some companies that own fiber networks. The goal is to embed quantum cryptography into the technology infrastructure so it becomes totally transparent to the end-user..." The cost of a pair of MagiQ boxes to implement point-to-point encryption on a 120-km link is $100,000 plus service.
The only way to see if this works is to break the fibre connection and see if it notices.
Oh lookie, the amazing thing is - a normal fucking fibre circuit will notice as well.
There is no quantum tech yet.
This is just going to increase our month subscriptions without giving any benefits, we will still use encryption on every required connection and will still have open holes alopng the way (last mile), so who exactly does it benefit?
I suggest any carrier should pay them with money stored in a quantum envelope. You are certain it contained $100,000 before you sealed it up, if its not there now it must have been intefered with.
liqbase
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How in the hell does this work? Why can the interfaces just have inboard encryptions?
WulframII - Free Online Mutiplayer 3D Tank Shooting Game
But what about the national security and GWoT?
So, how long as the military had this capability?
They (DARPA) is the largest funder of quantum research.
As a component of a broader security system, cryptography is valuable and solves many problems.
History shows that the weak links in systems employing cryptography is usually some other part of the system. DVD's are an obvious example.
Outside of gov't agencies and the mega-corps that service them, I don't see this taking off like the ipod. The PHB's in the banking world certainly won't understand why this is better than the systems they have now.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Isn't there a law requiring telecom providers to make their lines available for government monitoring?
Are companies really going to buy "private fiber" or is this really only for DoD use?
Clear, Dark Skies
But I'd rather the lines were upgraded to support faster speeds first. That should be a higher priority than embedding encryption into the network. There is little pressing need for better encyption, but more data bandwidth would help a lot of things.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
by definition Quantum cryptography can not be run on real networks were you have to do things like routing.
In practice, quantum cryptography doesn't achieve anything that regular crypto systems like SSL or ipsec don't. Quantum cryptography is theoretically unbreakable, whereas SSL is believed but not mathematically proven to be unbreakable. In either case, it's easiest for an attacker to compromise one of the endpoints, so it's not a big difference. SSL is cheap, easy and widely deployed. So why would anyone spend $100,000+ per link on untested quantum cryptography hardware, when you could roll out ipsec much more cheaply?
Worse, they talk about "repeaters" to extend the range past 120km - which is scary, because it implies they are decrypting/recrypting at the repeater.
Can you say "Physical Security"? I knew you could.
Clear, Dark Skies
Founder of quantum cryptography company predicts widespread adoption within three years.
Inventor of Segway predicts widespread adoption within three years.
Executive of personal hovercraft company predicts widespread adoption within three years.
Early investors in free energy scheme predict widespread adoption within three years.
Perl already does QM programming. Maybe the entanglement timemachine experiment in Spring 2008 will have been successful, and Perl hackers willam haven been sending code through the loop back to the 2002 CPAN?
--
make install -not war
I can't stand all the hype around Quantum Crypto. If you have a close look at it, you'll see that it doesn't solve anything...
When you transmit bits with QC the law of physics guarantee that nobody will see them, even if some genius breaks all the math behind classical crypto. This is all very well but the throughput is too low, thus QC is used to transmit a key which is then used to encrypt the data. Thus you still need symmetric crypto to encrypt your data.
Now, something everybody seems to ignore: QC does not authenticate the transmission. I can buy two magiQ boxes and set up a man in the middle attack. QC can not prove whether you are exchanging bits with the original sender or with some monkey in the middle. To solve this problem the QC vendors suggest:
- Physical monitoring of the fiber: if you can guarantee nobody touches your fibre, you don't need any crypto!
- Using certificates: Ooops, so now we need asymmetric crypto too, so our QC system relies both on symmetric and asymmetric crypto. Why do we need QC for then?
- Use a shared secret that is programmed into the boxes when they are delivered: If you already have a shared secret, you don't need to exchange a key with QC, you can derive the key from your shared secret...
So even if you use QC, you still need to rely on all the classical crypto to make it work. So it is just as good as classical crypto, without routing.You won't have gaping security holes in the last mile if you buy this stuff - it's designed to work on end-to-end dark fiber. You'll still need crypto for other reasons, and you'll still have gaping holes inside your wiring closets, but last mile won't be a problem. The range of the system is 120km, so if you're trying to connect buildings together that are farther apart than that, you do have a physical security problem you'll need to manage at your repeater locations.
This won't increase your phone bills unless you buy it. It's not a system designed for carriers to put in their network backbones - it's designed for an end-user customer to buy dark fiber service between a pair of buildings and put these boxes on the ends. The carriers generally charge a pile of money for that kind of service, and the more people buying it, the better their economies of scale, so if you're a consumer who's not buying this, that's slightly positive for you.
The carriers won't need to pay them with quantum money - the end customers will need to pay in real money...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
There are some economies of scale for the telcos if they start dealing with more dark fiber, which would be a fine thing, but the monthly costs are going to limit the user base more than the $100K hardware cost. The real tradeoff is between the service costs and the ability to distract auditors by pointing at the high-tech shiny thing.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This is a device that security-paranoid end users like banks or governments can buy, to put on the ends of building-to-building dark fiber service that they'd rent from the telcos. The reason a vendor like this would be working with telcos is to deal with service technology issues like fiber splices, and general service issues like finding out where dark fiber is available or can be constructed.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I just ordered my Flying Car today, with optional quantum encryption!
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
So they're going to spend billions implementing encryption on the wire why? AT&T of all carriers should see what a stupid investment that is. NOBODY in their right mind would trust them with secure data anymore. Cats out of the bag, you help the gov't spy on people. As if I or anyone else is going to believe you won't give the US Gov't special access to unencrypted data. Leave encryption up to the end users.
It's called ROT-26 and I'm using it right now.
Programmer: an ingenious device that converts caffeine into code.
I had mod points, but what the hell, this is an important point....
You are correct in pointing out (as most responsible qcrypto people do), that qcrypto needs authentication.
However, your argument doesn't follow
So even if you use QC, you still need to rely on all the classical crypto to make it work. So it is just as good as classical crypto, without routing.
The reason is that:
1) The authentication only needs to be secure for a second or two. I just use it foil a man-in-the-middle-attack or authenticate part of the protocol. So, if I use public key authentication, and the public key is then cracked, no problem, I've already used it to authenticate. The cracked key is now useless to the attacker. So, my attacker may even have a quantum computer, but she would still need more than a few seconds to crack the classical crypto.
2) Authenticating a message uses a very small amount of key (logarithmic), so if I start off with a small key from magicQ, then I can expand it, thus generating an arbitrary large amount of secret key from a tiny "seed". Thus sometimes, qcrypto is called "key expansion".
So, if you want to protect your data against future attacks (who knows how good algorithms and computers will get), or when we start needing to worry about quantum computers, then we will have to switch to quantum crypto-- it is just a matter of time.
As an aside, no responsible qcrypto person would suggest monitoring the fibre as a solution.
Deconstruct the State
as it relies only on being intractable. Throw enough (quantum) resources at it, and it is directly breakable. The fact that on average it takes CPU-centuries is irrelevant to "unbreakable".
Great, now hackers are going to need degrees in quantum physics just to steal porn.
Anything can, could, and will happen.
It's an interesting idea, I honestly don't know.
Clear, Dark Skies
What happens if you splice the line and put a repeater in that also reads the data passing through it?
Uh, Dude, you need to do a little bit of reading on quantum cryptography.
The whole point is that you can't do that. Well you can do it, but... everything goes "poof".
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
I heard there will be a 3-way power switch for the box; on, off and both.
Quantum computing cards will be a requirement for Duke Nukem Forever. That's why it's taking so long to ship... So when these become widespread, DNF will surely not be far behind!
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
About half the comments here are on base; some of the others are way out in the weeds. Those who are interested in this topic might like my blog posting at Stop the Myth. It includes some links to some relatively sane analyses of what QKD will and will not be useful for. I do expect QKD to be useful at some point, but at the moment I expect its utility to be in restricted settings. Quantum repeaters are a long way off; they are one of my current research topics. They will be useful for general distributed quantum computation, as well as QKD.
I work at a research company which designs, among other things, quantum crypto hardware. One important aspect of quantum crypto is that, once the channel is authenticated, the communication (more more precisely: the establishment of the key) cannot be wiretapped and stored away for later decryption. It's basically a method to strech a pre-shared secret (necessary for authentication) almost arbitraily, which can then be used as one-time-pad to encrypt the subsequent classical communication, rendering it unconditionally secure.
This makes sense if you need your secrets to last for a very long time in the face of a determined and resourceful attacker, outlasting potential breakthroughs in mathematics or quantum computing. Of course, only few customers actually need this level of security. However, if the secrets you are protecting are worth several billions, the cost for quantum hardware can be negligable, esp. when compared with all the other security measures you will have to take to make up a secure overall system.
Thing is, the Gov't has got a quantum superbit that can monitor the activities of all the other quantum bits. So they don't need the telco's to sniff traffic glue for them anymore, they can get the really good stuff while sitting under cheyenne mountain. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.
I would not rush to adopt quantum cryptography. It's a field in a state of flux (no pun intended) with regular breakthroughs, and plenty of unsolved problems. In the absence of a complete theory of physics, and the amount of research into coherence, non-destructive inference of quantum states, etc., it seems premature to be using hype and buzz words like 'impossible'. The discrete logarithm problem has withstood three decades of analysis - the irony being that the realization of practical quantum computing would render it obselete - and yet mathematicians have still not proven that this is a 'hard' problem in classical computation. QM is a fascinating field, and it's reasonable to expect breakthroughs that nobody has forseen. Exciting times for science, but it demands a healthy level of scepticism and constructive criticism by the cryptographic community.
The point about long-term secrecy is interesting, however, it can be cheaply addressed with classical cryptography, in a provably secure way (NOT depending on any computational assumptions like RSA).
http://athome.harvard.edu/dh/hvs.html
You still need more assumptions than with QC, which is why I don't exactly buy this approach, but if you really need long-term security, you might consider this scheme.
As for QC, it is expensive, point-to-point only, and makes sense only if you are worried about somebody breaking RSA or a similar problem. But the worst thing about QC is that we have no practical experience with it. QC may be theoretically unbreakable, but what about all the accompanying software and the normal communication channels that are necessary for QC to work, and standard attacks against those channels? QC is not only quantum transmission, but the whole suite of accompanying (classical) protocols, whose implementation might be seriously broken. We don't know. Why should anyone spend large amounts of money on something that may be, and in the current implementation probably is, broken and not secure at all?
Quality Control of ROT256 will secure all your information
Mod -1 "About as funny as a burning orphanage"
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-encryption:
"hyper-encryption can be proved to be information-theoretically secure, providing the storage bound cannot be surpassed."
Assuming a limited amount of storage for your adversary is a much more optimistic assumption than the mathematical assumptions underlying conventional encryption schemes and not comparable to the unconditional security provided by quantum crypto. It basically relies on the fact that the rate of both, the entropy source as well as the communication channel times your maximum communication latency is lower than the capacity of any feasable storage device. I doubt that this conditions can be reliably met, at least in the realm of fiber-bound communication (certainly not, if you want it to be cheaper than current quantum schemes).
As for the novelty of quantum crypto: Of course, there is not much practical experience, but this is the same with any new classical encryption algorithm. The problem is also easily avoided: Simply sandwich the quantum crypto between two layers of conventional cryptography, all with their own authentication and key-setup. Nobody is suggesting to completly replace classical crypto by quantum, after all. - It's just another brick in the wall of your overall security system (and the rest of the wall, esp. the human portion, is usually the expensive part).