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Malware In Quantum Computing?

Posted by kdawson on Tue Oct 24, 2006 12:32 PM
from the not-too-early-to-think-about-it dept.
Security Science
MattSparkes writes, "Today's quantum computers are not sophisticated enough to do anything malicious to your online bank account; the field is in its infancy. However, there are in theory more ways to attack quantum computers than classical ones. As quantum networking takes off, this is going to become a larger and more immediate problem." The Wikipedia article correctly identifies as an unsolved problem in physics the question of whether it is possible to construct a practical computer that performs calculations on qubits.
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[+] Science: Teleportation Gets a Boost 405 comments
saavyone writes to tell us Yahoo! News is reporting that while teleportation may not quite be a reality yet a team of Danish scientists have raised the bar on this line of research. From the article: "The experiment involved for the first time a macroscopic atomic object containing thousands of billions of atoms. They also teleported the information a distance of half a meter but believe it can be extended further. 'Teleportation between two single atoms had been done two years ago by two teams but this was done at a distance of a fraction of a millimeter,' Polzik, of the Danish National Research Foundation Center for Quantum Optics, explained. 'Our method allows teleportation to be taken over longer distances because it involves light as the carrier of entanglement,' he added."
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  • Links (Score:3, Funny)

    by MyLongNickName (822545) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @12:37PM (#16563068) Journal
    Anyone want to post the correct links?

    (must post anonymously so people don't figure out I RTFA)
    • (must post anonymously so people don't figure out I RTFA)

      Your security procedures, someone must have looked at the qubit representing your anonymous state.
      • The first link is basically about how if you're encoding quantum states onto photons and sending them down the line, then someone could theoretically scramble or block the communication by inserting a logic gate or polariser somewhere along that line.

        How is this news? You can scramble regular classical communication by cutting the wires or "inserting a logic gate" into the communication process. Hell you can scramble semaphore by inserting a barn in the wrong place.

        What, did the author think because it wa
  • Does that mean by not looking at it it will cease to exist?

  • Simple solution (Score:3, Funny)

    by neuro.slug (628600) <neuro__@nospAM.hotmail.com> on Tuesday October 24 2006, @12:37PM (#16563080)
    Just don't install Windows Vista XP Pro, which, ironically, requires a quantum computer to run.
    • Just don't install Windows Vista Pro

      As long as you don't put all 32 qubits into a superposition, you'll be fine. Otherwise you may be forced to pay the licensing fee to run it on 4,294,967,296 CPUs.

  • Obligatory: quantum virus... (Score:4, Funny)

    by fahrbot-bot (874524) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @12:39PM (#16563100)
    I'm a little uncertain, but I think that you can either know what's been infected, or how fast it's being infected, but not both...
  • ...There are wormholes.
    These are normally found where there is an abundance of tachyon emissions.

    Make a sensor for those and we can remove the wormholes and finally get rid of the worms.

    QED
  • "What is the answer to life, the universe and everything?" Computer prints out "1337".

  • blue sky speculation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lurker2288 (995635) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @12:46PM (#16563232)
    Quantum malware will be a huge threat...as soon as we have the widespread adoption of quantum computers performing sensitive tasks. And people who understand how to program viruses for them. And quantum computers for the virus programmers.

    Is this really even a story? We may as well be worrying about where to buy reliable crossbows once the atomic wars destroy civilization.
    • We may as well be worrying about where to buy reliable crossbows once the atomic wars destroy civilization.

      I agree, but my "Ask Slashdot" article on the subject was rejected. :(

  • yes it is too early to think about it (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Quadraginta (902985) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @12:47PM (#16563256)
    I'd like to point out, vice Larry Niven, that when teleportation and faster-than-light drives are invented they will make new types of crime possible.

    Not only that, but when immortality becomes possible, just think of the new pressures on the Earth's resources. Yet I'm going to bet those irresponsible doctor and medical researcher types haven't thought at all about this as they try to cure cancer and so forth.
    • I always thought that immortality could be used as a stealth weapon, albeit a slow one. Pretend there is a country you don't like but can't legally go to war with. For the sake of arguement, lets pretend it is France.

      1. USA offers all French seniors free immortality pills. (who would want to die?)
      2. French govt. checks for retirement never end, so they must raise taxes each year.
      3. Young educated people can't take the taxes, they leave and come to America.
      4. France is screwed because they are broke an

      • I always thought that immortality could be used as a stealth weapon, albeit a slow one. Pretend there is a country you don't like but can't legally go to war with.

        ...so you elect a Republican president and bomb the hell outta them anyways. "legal, shmegal" be damned. Much cheaper than immortality drugs.

      • So how is that different from France now?

    • I think you're right except for the "too early to think about it" part. Why wouldn't we want to think about the possible consequences of our inventions? Must we make all our mistakes and screw things up before we start thinking about them, or can't we try to consider the problems we might be inventing in order to avoid them?

      • Why wouldn't we want to think about the possible consequences of our inventions?

        Becausing thinking takes energy and time, which may be put to better use elsewhere. Or to put it more poetically:

        "If all of us contemplate the Infinite instead of fixing the drains, many of us will die of cholera."

        While we always hear quite a lot about the wisdom of thinking everything out ahead of time, I'll just mention that there's a lot to be said for trial-and-error, too. You waste a lot less time thinking carefully throu

        • Sure, that might be true if we were, for example, contemplating every possible scenario of extra-terrestrial visitation. What happens if Jesus comes from planet Nebulon riding a purple dragon? Yeah, that probably not worth wondering about. Quantum computing, on the other hand, is something being worked on right now. If there are going to be security flaws fundamental to the technology, it might be worth thinking about.

          Your other example, will we overtax our natural resources if we can stave off death f

      • Depends. Age/Disease immortality doesn't mean we're immune to starvation, getting smooshed or suffocated. So we'd still need to build a ship that can propel itself between stars, and carry enough fuel and energy to generate the food and work reliably for the hundreds and thousands of years a trip would take yet still spend fewer resources than such a mission could realistically bring back. Plenty of hurdles left methinks.
      • Oh, great. Those doctors haven't thought of what will happen when the immortal, ravenous human hordes hit the fragile galactic ecosystem either. Well, the one that will exist in a few billion years that is. How irresponsible.
        • ...what will happen when the immortal, ravenous human hordes hit the fragile galactic ecosystem ...

          I'm waiting for the protests from the new PETA...

          People for the Ethical Treatment of Asteroids.
  • I'll bet that if your quantum antivirus knows you have a quantum virus it won't know what directory its in and if it knows the directory it won't know the name of the files to kill...
  • IANAPhysist. In fact, when the article began to spew forth quantum mechanics info, my eye began to develop a twitch and I started to drool.

    However, I am a self proclaimed computer geek. The main benefit of quantum computers, as I understand it, is an exponential leap in computing power and storage of such systems. If I understand correctly, a qubit can be altered by it's environment and change it's state, thus ruining it's data. I fail to see how this differs from computers today. Run a magnet over a hard drive enough times and good by data. Hard drives fail and lose data all the time, but we have sophisticated data checking algorythms designed to catch this kind of thing so that it doesn't get out of hand. It looks like they are doing something similar here.

    I don't understand how one creates a worm with this either. If you know qubit for qubit, what data you want to change, then perhaps, but that requires knowing the qubits ahead of time, doesn't it? Same way with bits today. People create worms due to vulnerabilities within the hardware and software that they can program in. I know of no viruses which rewrite data specifically on their knowledge of ones and zeros.

    Could a worm try to attack the physical nature of a quantum computer and run the data by physically attacking it? I don't know in quantum computers, but maybe that's what they are saying. The article is sufficiently arcane that it's difficult to see if it's just an attempt at fear mongering among us lessers, by saying "ooooo quantum computers are vulnerable to worms!" or if there is any real value to this article.

    A quantum to english translator is needed :)

    • Re:A layman's take on this article (Score:4, Funny)

      by geoffspear (692508) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @01:25PM (#16564092) Homepage
      The main problem is that it's really hard to catch the guys putting viruses on your computers when they're living in a parallel universe.
    • >> I'm not a quantum expert, but this stuff seems to make a lot of sense to me -- at least if you are buying the drinks.

      What a Quantum Cubit does, as I've read (and it makes sense in my Quantum imaginations), is it can compute ALL POSSIBLE ANSWERS at one time. When I flip this sheet of paper over, it also has some winning lottery numbers -- also made obsolete by Quantum Computers if you believe the hype -- but not really since all numbers are valid answers.

      But conventional encryption won't work -- but

  • Windows Uncertainty Principle (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rufty (37223) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @12:58PM (#16563484) Homepage
    If I *know* it's got malware, I can't be sure if it's dead or alive...

  • Quantum Norton Antivirus? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Actually, a quantum Norton Antivirus would be easy. Just write a quantum application that doesn't do anything.
    • Actually, a quantum Norton Antivirus would be easy. Just write a quantum application that doesn't do anything.

      But it would have to be very large, and have the ability to slow all the other functions of your computer to less than light speed as well.
    • Not quite - it has to both do nothing AND consume all the resources that you may or may not have (depending on whether you're observing those resources or not).

    • But then how would you know it's not doing anything? It might actually be more useful than NAV.

  • Can anyone point me to some resources for me to learn more about quantum computing and especially quantum computational theory and algorithms?

    • Re:Somewhat Offtopic (Score:5, Informative)

      by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) (613870) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @01:27PM (#16564124) Journal
      What you need to learn about quantum computation is a function of what you know. If you know some mathematics, these are good: Kindergarten Quantum Mechanics [arxiv.org] and A Concise Introduction... [ucdavis.edu]. If you don't, I strongly suggest studying linear algebra, at least until you're 100% happy with tensor products of complex vector spaces, learning basic probability theory and then trying the second paper above.
        • Category theory is a great language for talking about linear algebra. And, conceptually at least, there really isn't much to quantum mechanics besides linear algebra. States are vectors, time evolution is a linear operator, combining two systems is a tensor product and so on.

  • Future Quantum Nerd Problems (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    My pr0n-collection has wormholed itself to another dimension :(

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_superposition [wikipedia.org]

    I kinda wondered how somthing can be in two positions at once, then I thought about how the water in a toilet spins in different directions on either side of the earth.

    So in a sense, we're basicly looking for a way to get smaller versions of us to flush their toilets when we want them to.
    I guess looking at it like that, malware in quantum computing would be the turds in our toilets that clog them up.

    We must ask the cats, as they have been observin
    • I can't help pointing out that water does not, in fact, swirl the "wrong way" on the other side of the equator. The coriolis effect which purportedly causes this is far, far too small a force compared to any other influences (shape of the container, direction the water is sprayed into it, a butterfly in Puerto Rico) to cause this, the Simpsons notwithstanding.

      Where this effect does appear is in large air masses, or perfectly still, shallow pans of water tens of meters across.
  • Simply find a parallel universe in which the quantum computer has already been rooted, and use that system to launch DDOU (Distributed Denial of Universe) attacks against the un-compromised quantum-entangled systems residing in nearby parallel universes.

    How are you going to defend against that?
  • Wow...that was a silly article.
  • "calculations on qubits"

    Qubits?? What, are you stuck in the days of Noah? We live in the modern world now. All calulations are done in feet and inches. Get with the times.

  • In other news, a new study shows that warp drive travel may not be as safe as other means of transportation such as cars or planes.

    • I decided to look this up. For example, this paper [aip.org] describes how it can occur using the spin of a particle. Basically, if an observer in a different frame of reference observes an entangled state of this particle, that observer will see some degree of decoherence that gets worse as the frames of reference diverge. Mathematically, Lorentz transforms mix spin and momentum of the particle, ultimately destroying entanglement of the spin. What's interesting is that this paper describes a way to entangle the spin

    • "...quantum entanglement, a spooky property that links particles however far apart they are...." Why not just make quantum networks that transfer using the quantum state directly. It would be faster-than-light networking,

      First, to entangle two quantum states at a distance the entanglement must be established in a localized interaction after which the particles representing that state can move to a distance. And second, while entanglement links two states at a distance, it does not in any way permit a mecha

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