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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday October 03 2017, @08:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the yes-and-no dept.

Hackers, take notice: Ultrasecure quantum video chats are now possible across the globe.

In a demonstration of the world's first intercontinental quantum link, scientists held a long-distance videoconference on September 29 between Austria and China. To secure the communication, a Chinese satellite distributed a quantum key, a secret string of numbers used to encrypt the video transmission so that no one could eavesdrop on the conversation. In the call, chemist Chunli Bai, president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, spoke with quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger, president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.

"It's a huge achievement," says quantum physicist Thomas Jennewein of the University of Waterloo in Canada, who was not involved with the project. "It's a major step to show that this approach could be viable."

I can't wait to use this!


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  • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday October 04 2017, @08:39PM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Wednesday October 04 2017, @08:39PM (#577166) Homepage

    Further to my previous reply:

    I wasn't sure about it at first, but the satellite can't MITM the entangled photons it sends out (the ground stations would discover it as a rate of failed correlations) so that concern is dealt with.

    Really, since this was just key distribution, you can mimic it on Earth without the expensive satellites. Just use a lead lined sleeve and send pages of QR codes that contain the key. Or even better, take a 10TB drive and fill it with high entropy random noise.

    Either of those could, in theory, be intercepted and copied. You just need a bribable or oblivious courier, that's all. Compared to the incorruptible laws of quantum physics, that's no security at all.

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