Equipment Already In Space Can Be Adapted For Extremely Secure Data Encryption (helpnetsecurity.com)

Orome1 quotes a report from Help Net Security: In a new study, researchers from the Max Planck Institute in Erlangen, demonstrate ground-based measurements of quantum states sent by a laser aboard a satellite 38,000 kilometers above Earth. This is the first time that quantum states have been measured so carefully from so far away. A satellite-based quantum-based encryption network would provide an extremely secure way to encrypt data sent over long distances. Developing such a system in just five years is an extremely fast timeline since most satellites require around 10 years of development. For the experiments, the researchers worked closely with satellite telecommunications company Tesat-Spacecom GmbH and the German Space Administration. The German Space Administration previously contracted with Tesat-Spacecom on behalf of the German Ministry of Economics and Energy to develop an optical communications technology for satellites. This technology is now being used commercially in space by laser communication terminals onboard Copernicus -- the European Union's Earth Observation Program -- and by SpaceDataHighway, the European data relay satellite system. It turned out that this satellite optical communications technology works much like the quantum key distribution method developed at the Max Planck Institute. Thus, the researchers decided to see if it was possible to measure quantum states encoded in a laser beam sent from one of the satellites already in space. In 2015 and the beginning of 2016, the team made these measurements from a ground-based station at the Teide Observatory in Tenerife, Spain. They created quantum states in a range where the satellite normally does not operate and were able to make quantum-limited measurements from the ground. The findings have been published in the journal Optica.

Comments

Backdoors

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, the German government is happy to support this so they can add backdoors and weaken the encryption. You Europeans who whine about the US are fools because your governments are quietly doing even worse things.

Re:Backdoors

[BlueStrat]

Oh please, in the real world it's been shown throughout history time after time, that the only "rights" anyone has are the ones they have the arms and resources to defend along with the plausible/believable *willingness* to use them against those who would infringe those rights, including, and especially, against their own government/leaders.

If you don't have the arms, resources, or plausible/believable (to those who would infringe rights) willingness to *kill* in defense of your individual rights, history teaches that you shall have none and deserve your relegation to serfdom.

Strat

Re:Backdoors

[CaptainDork]

Bullshit.

The prime example of your fallacy would be the United States of America.

The Confederacy had rights and resources and yet the insurgent traitors lost. How does that fit your narrative?

Also, look at the Civil Rights riots, the Ferguson riots, the Baltimore riots.

The fucking rioters used Stone Age techniques, throwing bottles, bricks, and stones and making fire.

The reason I call bullshit:

"Americans have the right to bear arms, but they don't have the right to use them." ~ © 2017 bigdealguy

Re:Backdoors

[BlueStrat]

The prime example of your fallacy would be the United States of America.

The Confederacy had rights and resources and yet the insurgent traitors lost. How does that fit your narrative?

What, you expect guarantees in life? Perfect outcomes every time with never a failure? How old are you?

The Confederacy lacked industrial infrastructure resources and suffered with poor logistical capabilities & resources, so my post stands and your example proves my post *for* me, thank you very much! :)

Having resources and arms (rights are what you're fighting for, and/or to preserve) does not 100% guarantee victory, but *not* having them does 100% guarantee defeat.

Strat

Re:Backdoors

[BlueStrat]

Also, look at the Civil Rights riots, the Ferguson riots, the Baltimore riots.

The fucking rioters used Stone Age techniques, throwing bottles, bricks, and stones and making fire.

The only reason those "disturbances" (they were hardly "riots" by comparison with the '60s civil rights riots I lived through) went on longer than a half an hour was that the politicians had the police holding back and standing down for political reasons. During the LA Rodney King riots the only stores in that area that weren't looted/burned were the ones guarded by armed shopkeepers. Guns in civilian hands save more lives in defense than they take in anger/greed.

Strat

Re:Backdoors

[CaptainDork]

So, in totality, you are contradicting yourself.

Re:Backdoors

[CaptainDork]

Guns in civilian hands save more lives in defense than they take in anger/greed.

Back that up.

Caution: This is my wheelhouse.

Re:Backdoors

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

In 'totality' you need to improve your reading comprehension skills and drop the sophistry, pedantry, and general intellectual dishonesty. If your ideas and principles can't stand on their own without resorting to such, they aren't very good ones.

Re:Backdoors

[Anonymous Coward]

No, disprove it if you disagree. He's not your step-n-fetch-it man. That's a cheap internet-argument tactic designed to relieve *you* of needing any proof to your counter-argument. It's intellectually-dishonest and indicates your position lacks merit.

History would seem to generally back him up, so if he's so wrong, you should be able to easily disprove it, so feel free, cite away.

They lose 99.9% of photons in the atmosphere.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's got to be a better way.

Re:They lose 99.9% of photons in the atmosphere.

[by (1706743)]

a) Citation? From the linked article

Loss through scattering and absorption at atmospheric particles is very low under good weather conditions and assumed here to be less than 2 dB. Turbulence induced beam spread and scintillation result in a small loss of about 1 dB.

b) 99.9% is, AFAIK, the loss you would get with ~100 km of fiber, not the 100s/1000s/etc. of km for satellite (99.9% loss = 1/1000 = -30dB = 100km*-0.3dB/km). They seem to lose quite a bit (north of 60dB) but this seems mostly due to apertureing.

Bullshit.

[Gravis Zero]

Equipment already in space would be extremely difficult to modify. What they really mean is that the design of space proven satellites could easily be modified.

The difference between these things is hundreds of millions of dollars, so this isn't just pedantry.

Re:Bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree but only partially. MOST old equipment in space won't be able to support the modification. Satellites that are 90's technology are less than likely capable of making the transition to support encryption (i.e., not enough CPU power and/or memory required to support a software based encryption solution).

But most modern satellites (as in 2000+ tech) should be able to handle encryption with minimal impact. The main concern would be power consumption due to the more intense use of CPU cycles.

Measurement or transmission ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't understand this - how would a transmission system already in place be able to make quantum measurements ?

We could use any transmission channel to send measurements already made, in the ground , in space, or whereever. That's just data transmission. Use Morse code ,telegraph... and yes optical.

If the system doesn't require the satellites to make any quantum measurements themselves , for which they weren't designed to do , then this is no different than saying my existing dialup connection can be used to do ultra secure TLS because , well , it's just data transmission and the security is in the endpoints.

Wrong title and old news

[Vadim Makarov]

First, the title is misleading. They used a satellite equipped with classical optical telecom to checkup some ground-based quantum receiving technology, but this was NOT quantum communication with the satellite. The sat they used is dead classical, built for other purposes. A new properly equipped quantum satellite would be needed for actual quantum communication.

Second, this is old news. The team has been reporting this experiment at conferences for the past year. This is to say, the German experiment was much less impressive but they got it a year ahead of the Chinese team.

This is pretty much nonsense

[gweihir]

First, for it to be secure, a theory which we know is flawed (Quantum Theory, does not account for Gravity) needs to hold up to an extremely precise level. Second, the engineering needs to be secure as well, and most instances of this have been broken in the past. And third, it is nonsense anyways, since after the key exchange, you have to revert to conventional encryption for the actual data transmission anyways.

Why this BS still gets any attention is really beyond me. People that want to believe in magic?

Re:This is pretty much nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

"First, for it to be secure, a theory which we know is flawed (Quantum Theory, does not account for Gravity) needs to hold up to an extremely precise level"

Quantum Field Theory makes extremely precise mathematical predictions, which have been shown correct in many experiments. Measuring the gravitational effect upon a particles momentum is nigh impossible due to how incredibly weak gravity is compared to the other forces (notice this is different from measuring the time dilation effects of different gravitational field strengths).

Precision:

So, which of the two is The Most Precisely Tested Theory in the History of Science?

It’s a little tough to quantify a title like that, but I think relativity can claim to have tested the smallest effects. Things like the aluminum ion clock experiments showing shifts in the rate of a clock set moving at a few m/s, or raised by a foot, measure relativistic shifts of a few parts in 1016. That is, if one clock ticks 10,000,000,000,000,000 times, the other ticks 9,999,999,999,999,999 times. That’s an impressively tiny effect, but the measured value is in good agreement with the predictions of relativity.

In the end, though, I have to give the nod to QED, because while the absolute effects in relativity may be smaller, the precision of the measurements in QED is more impressive. Experimental tests of relativity measure tiny shifts, but to only a few decimal places. Experimental tests of QED measure small shifts, but to an absurd number of decimal places. The most impressive of these is the “anomalous magnetic moment of the electron,” expressed is terms of a number g whose best measured value is:

g/2 = 1.001 159 652 180 73 (28)

Depending on how you want to count it, that’s either 11 or 14 digits of precision (the value you would expect without QED is exactly 1, so in some sense, the shift really starts with the first non-zero decimal place), which is just incredible. And QED correctly predicts all those decimal places (at least to within the measurement uncertainty, given by the two digits in parentheses at the end of that).

Coupling Constants:
Strong Force = 1
Electromagnetic = 1/137
Weak = 10^-6
Gravity = 10^-39

Re:This is pretty much nonsense

[gweihir]

"First, for it to be secure, a theory which we know is flawed (Quantum Theory, does not account for Gravity) needs to hold up to an extremely precise level"

Quantum Field Theory makes extremely precise mathematical predictions, which have been shown correct in many experiments. Measuring the gravitational effect upon a particles momentum is nigh impossible due to how incredibly weak gravity is compared to the other forces (notice this is different from measuring the time dilation effects of different gravitational field strengths).

Precision:

These happen to be too low for crypto. For crypto we would need around 256 bits, i.e. around 1 in 10^76. Even only 128 bit crypto would be around 1 in 10^38.
I do agree that the level of precision is _very_ impressive for Physics, it is just not enough by a very long shot for secure crypto. At the precision level needed for crypto, gravity matters very much.

Not in KSP

[Bohnanza]

You have to build an entire new craft to complete the contract

EXTREEEEME!!!

[newdsfornerds]

Like snapping into a SlimJim!!!