Quantum Cryptography Broken, and Fixed 118
schliz writes in with research out of Sweden in which researchers showed that, looking at a quantum cryptographic system as a whole, it was possible for an eavesdropper to extract some information about the QC key, thus reducing the security of the overall system. The team then proposed a cheap and simple fix for the problem. "The advanced technology was thought to be unbreakable due to laws of quantum mechanics that state that quantum mechanical objects cannot be observed or manipulated without being disturbed. But a research team at Linköping University in Sweden claim that it is possible for an eavesdropper to [get around the limitations] without being discovered. In a research paper, published in the international engineering journal IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (abstract), the researchers propose a change in the quantum cryptography process that they expect will restore the security of the technology."
So is the cat dead? (Score:5, Funny)
I know the solution (Score:5, Funny)
That wacky quantum cryptography (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So is the cat dead? (Score:5, Funny)
Which is precisely what happened.
By being sufficiently precise about the nature of the insecurity, they changed the probability of its being insecure!
Furthermore, now that we know it's secure again (that is, we've proven it to be secure, effectively computing the probability of insecurity to be precisely zero), we no longer know anything about the nature of the system's security holes again!
That was all supposed to be a lead-up to a Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle joke, but it's actually a pretty good description of how computer security works in even the non-quantum world. The more secure you think your system is, the more likely it is you'll get 0wn3d in some completely unexpected way. The known unknowns aren't the ones you've gotta worry about, and nailing them down doesn't do anything about the unknown unknowns, other than to collapse the joke's waveform into something resembling a Don Rumsfeld speech.
In anything other than a Slashdot quantum crypto discussion, that sort of whiplash-inducing change of joke subjects would be highly improbable. As it stands, I'm going to shift gears a third time and hand it off to Douglas Adams.
Zaphod: Tackhead, is this sort of thing going to happen every time you post using the Infinite Improbability joke drive?
Tackhead: Very probably, I'm afraid.
Re:That wacky quantum cryptography (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wah? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:One time pad (Score:4, Funny)
Spooky Decryption (Score:2, Funny)
Re:So is the cat dead? (Score:5, Funny)
It can be either alive or dead or both alive and dead.
We call these three states alive, dead and zombie.
There, I hope that sheds some photons on the matter.
Re:So is the cat dead? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, (Score:3, Funny)
Alice and Bob are sick today. We need some answers (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So is the cat dead? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:There is no such thing as absolute security (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The End of The Science of Cryptography (Score:3, Funny)
Unless of course (as was pointed out above), that lan is using Shrödinger's cat-5...
tm
Re:Fundamental Flaw in Quantum[Anything] (Score:2, Funny)
Too late, it caught on long ago. It's called religion.
Re:So is the cat dead? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So is the cat dead? (Score:3, Funny)
To quote one of my favorite games [kingdomofloathing.com]:
Re:So is the cat dead? (Score:3, Funny)
From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: