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.

Comments

SNAKE OIL!

[LiquidCoooled]

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.

Re:SNAKE OIL!

[skarphace]

And that's the problem with quantum encryption: it's far too susceptible to DOS attacks.

Which is why the tech should only be used on networks that value confidentiality more then service. Quantum Cryptography is NOT a technology for the internet and if anyone tries to convince you of that, they're wrong.

Cryptography != Security

[mpapet]

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.

Re:Cryptography != Security

[mcrbids]

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.

Funny that. When I read the price, my first thought was that this would very possibly explode!

It all comes down to benefits vs. cost. When there are billions of dollars on the line, protecting it with a mere $100,000 seems like chump change. And each $100,000 purchase helps prove a marketplace that will then lower costs.

With every new technology, there's an "adoption curve" where the price drops to a point where it makes sense at high economic levels. So the wealthy and the megacorps adopt the technology because it pays to do so. By doing so, the inventor/developer recoups their initial investments into the technology, and it begins to pay to reduce the price in order to encourage a larger marketplace.

Wash, rinse, repeat, and soon the new technology is available at very affordable prices to average people.

This doesn't happen to *all* technologies. For example, general aviation (EG: light, 1-12 person aircraft) is still pretty firmly entrenched in the ranks of the wealthy, for a variety of reasons. All too few people talk about the "family plane". But even in this case, commercial aviation is very reachable by the average Joe, a la SouthWest airlines.

So, to have perfectly unbreakable encryption over a 120 km link for just $100,000? I think that would get the attention of quite a number of large and middle-sized organizations, banks, and perhaps data warehouses.

Funny thing is

[rbunce]

by definition Quantum cryptography can not be run on real networks were you have to do things like routing.

Totally useless

[Jimmy_B]

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?

It's strictly point-to-point.

[porkchop_d_clown]

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.

Re:Quantum Crypto does not solve anything!

[da cog]

You post sounds like it is based on a misconception that QC is allowing Alice to transmit to Bob a secret. This is not what is going on at all; rather, a shared secret is being generated that Alice does not even know until the end of the process. In classical crypto, a man could sit in the middle and figure out the secret that is shared between Alice and Bob. In properly implemented quantum crypto, however, this is not possible. The best he could do -- using the very man in the middle attack that you described -- is to have one secret that is shared with Alice, and a separate secret that is shared with Bob, when Alice and Bob both think that they have a secret that is shared with each other. It is unlikely that Alice and Bob would take very long to notice that they are using different keys, given that this would produce garbage in every single message that they exchanged.

It's true that he could then hijack ALL communication channels between Alice and Bob, decrypt messages using one key and then re-encrypt them using the other, but... it would probably be easier just to bribe the people doing the transmitting and receiving to tell him what the messages were. I don't think that most people who are serious about security are claiming that QC is a miricule cure, just that it makes one part of the system much, much more secure.

It might be the case that the benefit is not worth the cost, given that the weakest link tends to be the human element, but this is much different than it being "just as good as classical crypto", or a form of "snake oil".