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Quantum Video Chat Links Scientists on Two Different Continents

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

rylyeh writes:

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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Original Submission

• Re:What's so quantum about this? (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday October 04 2017, @08:54PM

  by wonkey_monkey (279) on Wednesday October 04 2017, @08:54PM (#577176) Homepage

  There's one loophole: AFAICT you cannot use the very same pairs you checked entanglement on to also generate the key (because the check requires communication of measurement results, while those results you use for the key should of course not be transmitted). But exploiting that would require the eavesdropper to know in advance which pairs you use for Bell tests, and which for actual key generation.

  Doesn't simply checking whether the key ultimately works - encrypt and send something - tell you whether or not entanglement was uncompromised?

  --
  systemd is Roko's Basilisk

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