Quantum Cryptography Ready For Wide Adoption?

An anonymous reader points us to an interview with the founder of quantum cryptography pioneer MagiQ Technologies. From the article: "Q: When do you think we'll see service providers offer quantum cryptography services to their end-customers? A: This will happen within one year and we'll see fairly wide adoption within the next three years. We are working with big carriers such as Verizon and AT&T as well as some companies that own fiber networks. The goal is to embed quantum cryptography into the technology infrastructure so it becomes totally transparent to the end-user..." The cost of a pair of MagiQ boxes to implement point-to-point encryption on a 120-km link is $100,000 plus service.

SNAKE OIL!

[LiquidCoooled]

The only way to see if this works is to break the fibre connection and see if it notices.
Oh lookie, the amazing thing is - a normal fucking fibre circuit will notice as well.

There is no quantum tech yet.

This is just going to increase our month subscriptions without giving any benefits, we will still use encryption on every required connection and will still have open holes alopng the way (last mile), so who exactly does it benefit?

I suggest any carrier should pay them with money stored in a quantum envelope. You are certain it contained $100,000 before you sealed it up, if its not there now it must have been intefered with.

Cryptography != Security

[mpapet]

As a component of a broader security system, cryptography is valuable and solves many problems.

History shows that the weak links in systems employing cryptography is usually some other part of the system. DVD's are an obvious example.

Outside of gov't agencies and the mega-corps that service them, I don't see this taking off like the ipod. The PHB's in the banking world certainly won't understand why this is better than the systems they have now.

I'm sure they could do it.

[Daniel_Staal]

But I'd rather the lines were upgraded to support faster speeds first. That should be a higher priority than embedding encryption into the network. There is little pressing need for better encyption, but more data bandwidth would help a lot of things.

Funny thing is

[rbunce]

by definition Quantum cryptography can not be run on real networks were you have to do things like routing.

Totally useless

[Jimmy_B]

In practice, quantum cryptography doesn't achieve anything that regular crypto systems like SSL or ipsec don't. Quantum cryptography is theoretically unbreakable, whereas SSL is believed but not mathematically proven to be unbreakable. In either case, it's easiest for an attacker to compromise one of the endpoints, so it's not a big difference. SSL is cheap, easy and widely deployed. So why would anyone spend $100,000+ per link on untested quantum cryptography hardware, when you could roll out ipsec much more cheaply?

It's strictly point-to-point.

[porkchop_d_clown]

Worse, they talk about "repeaters" to extend the range past 120km - which is scary, because it implies they are decrypting/recrypting at the repeater.

Can you say "Physical Security"? I knew you could.

Re:SNAKE OIL!

[vertinox]

The only way to see if this works is to break the fibre connection and see if it notices.

What happens if you splice the line and put a repeater in that also reads the data passing through it?

Fiber optics are tappable you know.

You may notice a short downtime...

Re:Cryptography != Security

[mcrbids]

Outside of gov't agencies and the mega-corps that service them, I don't see this taking off like the ipod. The PHB's in the banking world certainly won't understand why this is better than the systems they have now.

Funny that. When I read the price, my first thought was that this would very possibly explode!

It all comes down to benefits vs. cost. When there are billions of dollars on the line, protecting it with a mere $100,000 seems like chump change. And each $100,000 purchase helps prove a marketplace that will then lower costs.

With every new technology, there's an "adoption curve" where the price drops to a point where it makes sense at high economic levels. So the wealthy and the megacorps adopt the technology because it pays to do so. By doing so, the inventor/developer recoups their initial investments into the technology, and it begins to pay to reduce the price in order to encourage a larger marketplace.

Wash, rinse, repeat, and soon the new technology is available at very affordable prices to average people.

This doesn't happen to *all* technologies. For example, general aviation (EG: light, 1-12 person aircraft) is still pretty firmly entrenched in the ranks of the wealthy, for a variety of reasons. All too few people talk about the "family plane". But even in this case, commercial aviation is very reachable by the average Joe, a la SouthWest airlines.

So, to have perfectly unbreakable encryption over a 120 km link for just $100,000? I think that would get the attention of quite a number of large and middle-sized organizations, banks, and perhaps data warehouses.

Re:SNAKE OIL!

[Amouth]

or you can just bend the fiber and catch what little bit makes it out.. or you could splice in a larger pice of glass like -|- and read it from the edge of the incerted glass - sure you would notice the beem being weaker but that amount depends on the size of the glass inserted - if you are looking up close you only need to divert alittle of the light to read it.. and the link wouldn't ever have to go down for it to happen - fiber is leaky.. just read the leaks or make your own.. no need to read and repeat just read

Re:Totally useless

[bcrowell]

OK, so this company will sell a big ISP a way to build a line that's immune to theoretical future attacks using quantum computing. The problem is that it costs a large amount of money, and those attacks are only theoretical. Their web site says the threat is that someone could collect a large amount of SSL-encrypted data, then decrypt it someday in the future using a quantum computer. Well:

1. Most criminals aren't in the habit of undertaking gigantic economic efforts for uncertain returns at some unknown date in the future.
2. Hypothetical criminals who want to collect SSH packets for later analysis can collect terabytes worth any time they like, simply because the nature of the internet is that it's designed so that packets are passed through machines that aren't trusted. An ISP could spend $100k to get quantum encryption on 100 miles worth of fiber, but realistically, criminals don't need and don't have physical access to the fiber anyway.
3. Very little data has the kind of long-term economic value that would justify this kind of effort by criminals. Their web site gives the example of medical data. WTF? Suppose I have gonorrhea. Thirty years from now, a Russian gangster says, "we have medical records from 2006, is proving you had gonorrhea; you pay us money, or we tell family." Is this a realistic threat?

Re:It's strictly point-to-point.

[raftpeople]

If the repeater decrypts and then re-encrypts the message for further transmission then you can extend the range. Clearly that opens up the problem of tapping into the repeater, but with good physical security it's better than nothing.

You're argument is incorrect

[wwwrench]

I had mod points, but what the hell, this is an important point....

You are correct in pointing out (as most responsible qcrypto people do), that qcrypto needs authentication.

However, your argument doesn't follow


So even if you use QC, you still need to rely on all the classical crypto to make it work. So it is just as good as classical crypto, without routing.


The reason is that:

1) The authentication only needs to be secure for a second or two. I just use it foil a man-in-the-middle-attack or authenticate part of the protocol. So, if I use public key authentication, and the public key is then cracked, no problem, I've already used it to authenticate. The cracked key is now useless to the attacker. So, my attacker may even have a quantum computer, but she would still need more than a few seconds to crack the classical crypto.

2) Authenticating a message uses a very small amount of key (logarithmic), so if I start off with a small key from magicQ, then I can expand it, thus generating an arbitrary large amount of secret key from a tiny "seed". Thus sometimes, qcrypto is called "key expansion".

So, if you want to protect your data against future attacks (who knows how good algorithms and computers will get), or when we start needing to worry about quantum computers, then we will have to switch to quantum crypto-- it is just a matter of time.

As an aside, no responsible qcrypto person would suggest monitoring the fibre as a solution.

Re:SNAKE OIL!

[orgelspieler]

In true quantum cryptography, you cannot use a repeater. This is due to the Observer Effect. By measuring the quantum state of a particle, you change it. A professor explained it to me back in the 90s, but I can't remember all the details.

Re:Quantum Crypto does not solve anything!

[da cog]

You post sounds like it is based on a misconception that QC is allowing Alice to transmit to Bob a secret. This is not what is going on at all; rather, a shared secret is being generated that Alice does not even know until the end of the process. In classical crypto, a man could sit in the middle and figure out the secret that is shared between Alice and Bob. In properly implemented quantum crypto, however, this is not possible. The best he could do -- using the very man in the middle attack that you described -- is to have one secret that is shared with Alice, and a separate secret that is shared with Bob, when Alice and Bob both think that they have a secret that is shared with each other. It is unlikely that Alice and Bob would take very long to notice that they are using different keys, given that this would produce garbage in every single message that they exchanged.

It's true that he could then hijack ALL communication channels between Alice and Bob, decrypt messages using one key and then re-encrypt them using the other, but... it would probably be easier just to bribe the people doing the transmitting and receiving to tell him what the messages were. I don't think that most people who are serious about security are claiming that QC is a miricule cure, just that it makes one part of the system much, much more secure.

It might be the case that the benefit is not worth the cost, given that the weakest link tends to be the human element, but this is much different than it being "just as good as classical crypto", or a form of "snake oil".

Re:SNAKE OIL!

[skarphace]

And that's the problem with quantum encryption: it's far too susceptible to DOS attacks.

Which is why the tech should only be used on networks that value confidentiality more then service. Quantum Cryptography is NOT a technology for the internet and if anyone tries to convince you of that, they're wrong.

Re:Quantum Crypto does not solve anything!

[kyb]

Only benefit of QCrypto over classical crypto: It stops evesdropping. Problem: It doesn't stop some forms of man in the middle. All this stuff you've said is true, but I don't think it really contradicts the parent. QCrypto is hyped as being unbeatable, which it clearly isn't. The massive effort you think it would take to hijack ALL communications channels between Alice and Bob, is really not that big a deal- you wouldn't man in the middle the QCrypto link unless you knew the other channel the message is going over and could MitM that too. I'm still massively unimpressed with QCrypto. On top of that, there are other ways that may be just as effective at stopping evesdropping, see "hold the photons" by Bruce Scheier in wired.

Re:Quantum Crypto does not solve anything!

[Vellmont]

It's true that he could then hijack ALL communication channels between Alice and Bob, decrypt messages using one key and then re-encrypt them using the othe

I thought this is EXACTLY what a man-in-the-middle attack was. If you have another communication channel that doesn't have an attacker between Alice and Bob, Alice and Bob are always going to figure out that they aren't sharing the same key.

but... it would probably be easier just to bribe the people doing the transmitting and receiving to tell him what the messages were

Well sure.. but it's also easier to do that than crack conventional cryptography. So given this, what advantage does quantum cryptography have?