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posted by chromas on Monday November 04 2019, @03:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the coming-to-a-credit-card-near-you dept.

Up until now, QKD (Quantum Key Distribution) required devices the size of a refrigerator or larger. Now researchers have developed a QKD chip a mere 3 millimeters in size.

So why is QKD so important? Right now, when we encrypt data we generally use passwords or biometric data, which can be hacked or leaked.

Quantum technology, however, allows us to encrypt the key within the message. Only the person with the exact same key as the one inside the message can open it.

"It is like sending a secured letter," says physicist Kwek Leong Chuan, from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. "Imagine that the person who wrote the letter locked the message in an envelope with its key also inside it. The recipient needs the same key to open it."

The applications for QKD such as something that can be worn on your wrist or in a smartphone are significant in commerce, security, and next generation communications. Additionally, the new solution

developed by the scientists at NTU should be relatively easy and cheap to produce, as it uses standard industry materials like silicon, that are already widely used in computer manufacturing.

Certainly easier than carrying around a refrigerator.

Journal Reference
Zhang, G., Haw, J.Y., Cai, H. et al. An integrated silicon photonic chip platform for continuous-variable quantum key distribution.[$] Nat. Photonics (2019) doi:10.1038/s41566-019-0504-5


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  • (Score: 1, Redundant) by exaeta on Monday November 04 2019, @07:38PM (21 children)

    by exaeta (6957) on Monday November 04 2019, @07:38PM (#915857) Homepage Journal
    QKD is just a quantum replacement for DHE. And it inherits all the vulnerabilities of DHE, namely a weakness to MITM attacks. DHE is a solved problem, why the hell do we need QKD?
    --
    The Government is a Bird
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  • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 04 2019, @09:47PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 04 2019, @09:47PM (#915956)

    And it inherits all the vulnerabilities of DHE, namely a weakness to MITM attacks.

    It specifically prevents MITM attacks. It is ABSOLUTELY. IMPOSSIBLE. to MITM a QKD system. That's the entire point of QKD. You can't eavesdrop on the key exchange.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Monday November 04 2019, @10:52PM (8 children)

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday November 04 2019, @10:52PM (#916002) Homepage
      Security Top Tip: If you believe your installation is absolutely impossible to hack, then you've just introduced your first vulnerability.

      However, yes, by design the mathematics and hardcore physics makes QKE theoretically impossible to MITM.

      Who made your repeaters? Huawei, you say?
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Monday November 11 2019, @12:01AM (7 children)

        by exaeta (6957) on Monday November 11 2019, @12:01AM (#918744) Homepage Journal
        If changing out the middle links (the repeaters/telcom equipment) can break security, you are, by definition, not secure against a MITM attack.
        --
        The Government is a Bird
        • (Score: 1, Troll) by FatPhil on Monday November 11 2019, @10:34AM (6 children)

          by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday November 11 2019, @10:34AM (#918886) Homepage
          You are if you can detect the change. And in the case of correctly-implemented quantum repeaters, you can. These ain't just dumb repeaters like things were in the 1900s.
          --
          Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
          • (Score: 1, Redundant) by exaeta on Monday November 11 2019, @02:46PM (5 children)

            by exaeta (6957) on Monday November 11 2019, @02:46PM (#918942) Homepage Journal

            The entire point of cryptography is that you assume your infrastructure is compromised other than 1) your computer and 2) the other party's computer. Let that sink in. Classical crypto works even assuming ALL networking infrastructure is totally and utterly compromised by an adversary. If quantum requires intact infrastructure it is a huge step backwards!

            The basic objective of cryptography is that you must be able to guarantee that, given an attacker has complete control of everything inbeweeen you and the other party that either:

            1) The message is delivered to the intended recipient and nobody else could read it, OR
            2) The message was not delivered, and nobody could read it.

            QKD doesn't acomplish this, all it knows is that the message was delivered to *somebody* and you have to use other means to verify who that somebody was. MITM attacks can compromise this sort of connection. Again, there is a parallel between DHE and QKD, but you don't seem to recognize there is a larger security picture in play here and one component like QKD cannot guarantee security of an entire system. QKD is flawed at its heart because, like diffie hellman exchanges, it is a symmetric key exchange function. Symmetric key exchange functions are fundamentally vulnerable to man in the middle attacks even if the implementation is absolutely utterly perfect without any flaws whatsoever. Get this last point through your thick skull. It does not matter how perfect that exchange is, the scope of what it acomplishes is still vulnerable to a MITM attack. This is an inherit category vulnerability to these functions and the scope of what they acomplish and more importantly what they not verify and acomplish. It's an inherit category vulnerability to the system as a whole when you use this class of functions as your sole security measure. If you intend to suggest that QKD provides asymmetric key exchange functionality then please do elaborate exactly how that works.

            Saying that QKD is impossible to MITM either shows you are totally ignorant of the scope of what a symmetric key exchange function acomplishes or alternatively you are intentionally decietful and trying to portray QKD as a magic pipe that protects data exchanged through it. I'm hoping it's the former. The guarantees of classic cryptography, when implemented correctly, are far stronger than you appear to comprehend and quantum crypto looks like a laughable toy at the moment. QKD is a joke.

            --
            The Government is a Bird
            • (Score: 1, Troll) by FatPhil on Monday November 11 2019, @08:56PM (4 children)

              by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday November 11 2019, @08:56PM (#919071) Homepage
              > QKD doesn't acomplish this

              Wrong.
              --
              Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
              • (Score: 1, Redundant) by exaeta on Monday November 11 2019, @11:39PM (3 children)

                by exaeta (6957) on Monday November 11 2019, @11:39PM (#919140) Homepage Journal
                Prove it. You can't, because QKD doesn't.
                --
                The Government is a Bird
                • (Score: 1, Redundant) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 12 2019, @01:10PM (2 children)

                  by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday November 12 2019, @01:10PM (#919358) Homepage
                  You're the one making the extraordinary claim that goes against everything that is known about quantum mechanics - the single most reliably tested model in the whole of science, so it's you who needs to present some evidence to support your extremely marginal claim. My claims are nothing more than "the QM that's been known about in theory for 60-90 years holds in this real world situation".
                  --
                  Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
                  • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:13PM (1 child)

                    by exaeta (6957) on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:13PM (#919402) Homepage Journal

                    You're the one who doesn't seem to understand the scope of what QKD provides.

                    The main drawback of Quantum Key Distribution is that it usually relies on having an authenticated classical channel of communications. In modern cryptography, having an authenticated classical channel means that one has either already exchanged a symmetric key of sufficient length or public keys of sufficient security level. With such information already available, one can achieve authenticated and secure communications without using QKD, such as by using the Galois Counter Mode of the Advanced Encryption Standard. Thus it is sometimes jokingly said[who?] that QKD does the work of a Stream Cipher at a million times the cost.

                    Cite: wikipedia.

                    If you actually understood QKD (I do) you would know that it doesn't protect against a wide variety of attacks, and needs to be augmented with classical cryptography. It's vulnerable to MITM attacks unless you add in other kinds of classical cryptography to protect against them. Per wikipedia, "The main drawback of Quantum Key Distribution is that it usually relies on having an authenticated classical channel of communications.", QKD does NOT provide authentication. That has to be provided by something else. QKD is as vulnerable as your asymmetric encryption channel, it is not impossible to MITM. The asymmetric channel is the ONLY thing preventing a MITM attack against QKD. You don't seem to have a background in cryptography, but you don't seem to understand the scope of the QKD either.

                    I call QKD bullshit, not because it doesn't work, but because it provides very little that an asymmetric channel doesn't already provide. Tell me, do you actually even know the difference between cryptographic authentication and cryptographic verification? Or between asymmetric and symmetric encryption? It's not readily apparent that you know what you are talking about, since you haven't made a single valid counterpoint, just blind assertions with no reasoning or evidence. YOU are the one misunderstanding QKD and what it is supposedly able to do. I don't think you have the background knowledge about various attacks on cryptographic systems that have developed to be able to intuitively understand the weaknesses about systems like this. I have not at any point challenged the eavesdropping immunity of a QKD exchange, which is what the physics provides. What you seem to lack is the ability to comprehend that this level of secrecy is still vulnerable because you have an oversimplified view of information security.

                    If you DO understand this subject, care to explain, in a short paragraph, the vulnerability of a Diffie Hellman exchange to a Man In The Middle attacker? Then, explain to me why QKD is NOT vulnerable to the same attack (hint: you wont be able to). If you don't, we can fairly assume you don't have a clue what you are talking about. Impossible is a bold claim, we usually prefer infeasible and support that reasoning with evidence. The burden of proof of security is always on the person claiming a system to be secure; because most of the time, they aren't.

                    --
                    The Government is a Bird
                    • (Score: 1, Troll) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 12 2019, @08:32PM

                      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday November 12 2019, @08:32PM (#919536) Homepage
                      That's a lot of straw man there.

                      I suspect you've started to do a bit of reading, as you've started to repeat some of the things I was saying earlier.

                      You seem to think that QKD attempts to solve problems that it's not been designed to solve, and therefore *those are not weaknesses in the design*. You can keep your straw men, I'm not interested.
                      --
                      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Tuesday November 05 2019, @06:14PM

      by exaeta (6957) on Tuesday November 05 2019, @06:14PM (#916413) Homepage Journal

      QKD is not impossible to MITM... The fact you think so illustrates your ignorance of security. MITM is not the same as eavesdropping.

      QKD is theoretically impossible to eavesdrop on. But how can it be MITM'd? Simple, the attacker does a QKD with you and a separate QKD with the other side, translating messages as needed so it passes validation on both sides.

      There is a valid QKD channel between the attacker and another QKD channel with the other party.

      This is the exact vulnerability Diffe Hellman Exchanges have and QKD does not solve it. Classical cryptography already solved this issue with something called "public key cryptography".

      QKD provides only confidentiality, it has no mechanism to verify the identity of the other side. Let that sink in. Sure, you might have a secure channel, but with who?

      Phsyicists with no idea how information security works need to shut up already about garbage quantum crypto become educated about how information security works before touting how amazing quantum is.

      Sorry if I come off as rude, but you are wrong and need to be corrected.

      --
      The Government is a Bird
  • (Score: 1, Redundant) by FatPhil on Monday November 04 2019, @10:49PM (9 children)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday November 04 2019, @10:49PM (#915999) Homepage
    Its quantum (no copying) nature means that any evesdropping significantly greater than the quantum channel's noise floor will be noticed, and the key exchange invalidated. You do expect some noise in a quantum channel, so there is a small amount of evesdropping that is possible undetected (noise is effectively the outside world evesdropping on the channel accidentally). This is why the raw data that is successfully exchanged in order to agree a key is hashed to form the real key, so that even the evesdropped bits below the noise floor are completely useless.
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Tuesday November 05 2019, @06:26PM (8 children)

      by exaeta (6957) on Tuesday November 05 2019, @06:26PM (#916422) Homepage Journal
      If only an attacker(Eve) could man in the middle! Imagine if Bob and Alice communicated over a QKD system! Nobody could eavesdrop! Problem is that Bob is really talking to Eve who is also talking to Alice. There's no eavesdropping permitted in the channels between Eve and Alice nor Eve and Bob though, phew! Saved from eavesdropping by QKD! (Doesn't thwart man in the middle attacks, though, as noted.)
      --
      The Government is a Bird
      • (Score: 1, Redundant) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 05 2019, @11:02PM (7 children)

        by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday November 05 2019, @11:02PM (#916588) Homepage
        What you've written makes it sound like you don't know how quantum key exchange is done. Evesdropping introduces noise. You compare notes (in *public*, nothing is leaked) before you agree on the key, and that comparison reveals how much noise there was, and therefore if there was an evesdropper or other man in the middle who perturbed the state of the bits (which is unavoidable, because physics). Are you imagining that authentification (a horrible word, but it's the term of art) does not exist?
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
        • (Score: 1, Redundant) by exaeta on Wednesday November 06 2019, @06:33AM (6 children)

          by exaeta (6957) on Wednesday November 06 2019, @06:33AM (#916734) Homepage Journal

          Uh... when you initiate the exchage. How do you know you weren't talking to Evil Eve to begin with?

          Man in the middle doesn't perturb anything. Man in the middle is a case of identity falsification... imagine for a moment, the other computer was disconnected from the QKD network and the QKD connection was instead plugged into the attacker's computer. The attacker has the same type of QKD device as the intended target... how can you detect this compromise? The hardware is identical and made by the same manufacturer as the intended QKD partner. How do you detect this? Does QKD give you verification of the other party's location?

          Bob: I'm Bob, My qkd key is 2ir702o27294.
          Eve: I'm Alice, I also verified that key of 2ir702o27294. No eavesdropping detected.
          Bob: Okay Alice, I checked your key 2ir702o27294 and I see we establushed an eavesdropping proof quantum connection!
          Bob: Log into my account bob@warez.net with password foobar0y2k
          Eve: Okay, Bob, here's you bank account information. 3882 3882 1882 8888
          Meanwhile:

          Eve: I'm Bob, My qkd key is 3988d002028noz
          Alice: I'm Alice, I also verified that key of 3988d002028noz. No eavesdropping detected.
          Eve: Okay Alice, I checked your key 3988d002028noz and I see we establushed an eavesdropping proof quantum connection!
          Eve: Log into my account bob@warez.net with password foobar0y2k
          Alice: Okay, Bob, here's you bank account information. 3882 3882 1882 8888

          Result: Eve now has Bob's bank account information, despite the quantum tunnel.

          --
          The Government is a Bird
          • (Score: 2, Interesting) by FatPhil on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:08AM

            by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:08AM (#916746) Homepage
            > How do you know you weren't talking to Evil Eve to begin with?

            Clue - that's answered in my prior post.
            --
            Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
          • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday November 08 2019, @09:33AM (4 children)

            by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 08 2019, @09:33AM (#917819) Journal

            Just because you disagree with him doesn't mean that he is trolling. I'm not saying that he is right and you are wrong, but you could at least debate the point without trying to suppress his views. I would suggest that the 'Disagree' moderation is more appropriate in this instance.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @02:56PM (2 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @02:56PM (#917873)
              If you're talking about the post above, then yes, it's trolling. Responding with "I already answered that", when this is not really true, I think, would count as trolling. But hey, I consider information-less posts trying to argue a point trolling. Maybe if there was a "contains no information" or "uninformative" mod I would use it. Redundant kind of implies they are repeating a point that has already been made. That isn't the case here, it's just a useless post with no information. One can't disagree with a post that doesn't state an opinion or provide any reasoning or evidence to support it.
              • (Score: 1, Troll) by janrinok on Friday November 08 2019, @05:54PM (1 child)

                by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 08 2019, @05:54PM (#917955) Journal

                If you re-read the post you believe he is trolling in, you will see that he has answered that question.

                You compare notes (in *public*, nothing is leaked) before you agree on the key, and that comparison reveals how much noise there was, and therefore if there was an evesdropper or other man in the middle who perturbed the state of the bits (which is unavoidable, because physics).

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 09 2019, @03:50PM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 09 2019, @03:50PM (#918294)
                  Might as well have exchanged public keys at that point. There's no point to QKD.
            • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Monday November 11 2019, @11:44PM

              by exaeta (6957) on Monday November 11 2019, @11:44PM (#919143) Homepage Journal
              Should I abuse the -1 redundant mod instead when he is clearly trolling? lol!
              --
              The Government is a Bird