Tag Archive for: futile

Quantum cryptography: Hacking is futile



An international team has successfully implemented an advanced form of quantum cryptography for the first time. Moreover, encryption is independent of the quantum device used and therefore even more …

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Quantum cryptography: Making hacking futile


quantum
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The Internet is teeming with highly sensitive information. Sophisticated encryption techniques generally ensure that such content cannot be intercepted and read. But in the future high-performance quantum computers could crack these keys in a matter of seconds. It is just as well, then, that quantum mechanical techniques not only enable new, much faster algorithms, but also exceedingly effective cryptography.


Quantum key distribution (QKD)—as the jargon has it—is secure against attacks on the communication channel, but not against attacks on or manipulations of the devices themselves. The devices could therefore output a key which the manufacturer had previously saved and might conceivably have forwarded to a hacker. With device- independent QKD (abbreviated to DIQKD), it is a different story. Here, the cryptographic protocol is independent of the device used. Theoretically known since the 1990s, this method has now been experimentally realized for the first time, by an international research group led by LMU physicist Harald Weinfurter and Charles Lim from the National University of Singapore (NUS).

For exchanging quantum mechanical keys, there are different approaches available. Either light signals are sent by the transmitter to the receiver, or entangled quantum systems are used. In the present experiment, the physicists used two quantum mechanically entangled rubidium atoms, situated in two laboratories located 400 meters from each other on the LMU campus. The two locations are connected via a fiber optic cable 700 meters in length, which runs beneath Geschwister Scholl Square in front of the main building.

To create an entanglement, first the scientists excite each of the atoms with a laser pulse. After this, the atoms spontaneously fall back into their ground state, each thereby emitting a photon. Due to the conservation of angular momentum, the spin of the atom is entangled with the polarization of its emitted photon. The two light particles travel along the fiber optic cable to a…

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BlackBerry issues futile call for ‘app neutrality’

App neutrality? Honestly?

This proposal by BlackBerry – actually sent to U.S. lawmakers yesterday – calls for the government to compel the likes of Netflix to make their applications work with the likes of BlackBerry whether business considerations justify it or not.

From a blog post based on that letter to Congress and carrying the byline of BlackBerry CEO John Chen.

Unfortunately, not all content and applications providers have embraced openness and neutrality. Unlike BlackBerry, which allows iPhone users to download and use our BBM service, Apple does not allow BlackBerry or Android users to download Apple’s iMessage messaging service. Netflix, which has forcefully advocated for carrier neutrality, has discriminated against BlackBerry customers by refusing to make its streaming movie service available to them. Many other applications providers similarly offer service only to iPhone and Android users. This dynamic has created a two-tiered wireless broadband ecosystem, in which iPhone and Android users are able to access far more content and applications than customers using devices running other operating systems. These are precisely the sort of discriminatory practices that neutrality advocates have criticized at the carrier level.

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Network World Paul McNamara

City rejects Comcast, but resistance is futile

Comcast is undergoing a nationwide exchange of customers as part of its massive merger with rival service provider Time Warner Cable, bringing many new cities and towns into its control in the process. Worcester, Massachusetts, wants everyone to know that it doesn’t want to be one of those cities.

Worcester’s City Council voted 8-3 this week to reject an upcoming transfer of its cable television license to Comcast, making it the first of the 53 other Central Massachusetts towns affected by the plan to reject it publicly, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported.

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Network World Colin Neagle