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Quantum Encryption Implementation Broken

Posted by timothy on from the but-this-was-a-quantum-drawing-board dept.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Professor Johannes Skaar's Quantum Hacking group at NTNU have found a new way to break quantum encryption. Even though quantum encryption is theoretically perfect, real hardware isn't, and they exploit these flaws. Their technique relies on a particular way of blinding the single photon detectors so that they're able to perform an intercept-resend attack and get a copy of the secret key without giving away the fact that someone is listening. This attack is not merely theoretical, either. They have built an eavesdropping device and successfully attacked their own quantum encryption hardware. More details can be found in their conference presentation."

6 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Successfully broken before anybody was using it! by FooAtWFU · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now that's efficiency for you, folks!

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    The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
  2. This is why we can't have nice things by PixieDust · · Score: 5, Funny

    Can we please get to play with some of these emerging technologies before someone goes breaking them? This is why we can't have nice things! You intellectuals and your tinkering....

  3. And they call it... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Schrödinger's Hack!

    1. Re:And they call it... by Itninja · · Score: 5, Funny

      Sure, they call it that....and they don't. It's complicated.

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      I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
  4. Broken by Wowsers · · Score: 4, Funny

    There's only one way to look at this story, the quantum encryption may or may not be broken, or maybe partially so, so both cases could be true at the same time.

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    Take Nobody's Word For It.
  5. Taking the least publishable unit to the extreme by nedlohs · · Score: 4, Funny

    1. Build quantum encryption system with a security flaw in the implementation.
    2. Publish!
    3. Exploit the flaw.
    4. Publish!
    5. Fix the flaw.
    6. Publish!