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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
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Monday November 04 2019, @10:52PM (8 children)
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)
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 1, Troll) by FatPhil on Monday November 11 2019, @10:34AM (6 children)
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)
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)
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)
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 1, Redundant) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 12 2019, @01:10PM (2 children)
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)
You're the one who doesn't seem to understand the scope of what QKD provides.
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
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