Quantum Encryption Implementation Broken 133
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Professor Johannes Skaar's Quantum Hacking group at NTNU have found a new way to break quantum encryption. Even though quantum encryption is theoretically perfect, real hardware isn't, and they exploit these flaws. Their technique relies on a particular way of blinding the single photon detectors so that they're able to perform an intercept-resend attack and get a copy of the secret key without giving away the fact that someone is listening. This attack is not merely theoretical, either. They have built an eavesdropping device and successfully attacked their own quantum encryption hardware. More details can be found in their conference presentation."
Successfully broken before anybody was using it! (Score:5, Funny)
This is why we can't have nice things (Score:5, Funny)
And they call it... (Score:5, Funny)
Broken (Score:5, Funny)
There's only one way to look at this story, the quantum encryption may or may not be broken, or maybe partially so, so both cases could be true at the same time.
Re:Fond memories (Score:4, Funny)
You went back in time and took a picture of yourself?
Re:And they call it... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Broken (Score:1, Funny)
Like that darn fat cat!
Re:Intercept-Resend Attack (Score:3, Funny)
Because Intellectual Property Hoggers International got a patent on a man-in-the-middle (TM) attack and the accountants at the university wouldn't pay the licensing fees, so they had to come up with a COMPLETELY NEW and different attack to avoid patent litigation, thus the incredibly novel "intercept-resend attack" (patent pending).
Re:Fond memories (Score:3, Funny)
Taking the least publishable unit to the extreme (Score:5, Funny)
1. Build quantum encryption system with a security flaw in the implementation.
2. Publish!
3. Exploit the flaw.
4. Publish!
5. Fix the flaw.
6. Publish!
Re:I've heard this before (Score:1, Funny)
Actually, Marx's main flaw was in how he valued technology.
I would have though that Marx's main flaw was that he saw the problem of the workers not receiving the fruits of their labor and tried to solve it by implementing a system in which you did not own the fruits of your labor. As such, communism completes the problem it sets out to solve.
From a perspective of software engineering, the equivalent would be solving file corruption by preventing file creation. Now that filthy capitalist operating system can't destroy parts of the files!