Scientific American on Quantum Encryption 374
prostoalex writes "Scientific American claims that advances in commercially available quantum encryption might obsolete the existing factorization-based solutions: "The National Security Agency or one of the Federal Reserve banks can now buy a quantum-cryptographic system from two small companies - and more products are on the way. This new method of encryption represents the first major commercial implementation for what has become known as quantum information science, which blends quantum mechanics and information theory. The ultimate technology to emerge from the field may be a quantum computer so powerful that the only way to protect against its prodigious code-breaking capability may be to deploy quantum-cryptographic techniques.""
Unbreakable Encryption... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Unbreakable Encryption... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Unbreakable Encryption... (Score:3, Funny)
The only problem with this is that when you send your cipher text, the big bad corrupt government agency can easily show that your clear text was "I planted the bomb"
A pity, as it looked as though the cipher text would compress really well.
Re:Unbreakable Encryption... (Score:5, Funny)
But you still need to apply for an export licence if you use a encryption key greater than 128 bits in size.
n.b does not hurt cats unless you observe them (Score:5, Funny)
Re:n.b does not hurt cats unless you observe them (Score:2)
"Schrödinger may have been here"
You see, only pussies don't look in the box. And if there was a pussy in the box, it would look at it. If the cat was dead, it would no longer be a pussy, and therefore, not look at it!
Re:n.b does not hurt cats unless you observe them (Score:2)
Uhh... (Score:2)
Re:Uhh... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Uhh... (Score:2)
*puzzled*.
Re:Uhh... (Score:5, Informative)
If you have a quantum byte, i.e. 8 quantum bits, you can load it with 256 different integers simultaneously. You can do a single computation on the byte, and this computation is done simultaneously on all the 256 integers. This can easily be emulated, with 256 computers, as you suggest.
But, if you have a quantum computer with 256 quantum bits, you can do computations simultaneously on 2**256 integers. That's not easy to emulate with classical computers because we don't have enough of them.
The main problem with constructing algorithms for quantum computers is to read the result. When you read the 256-bits you only get a single number among the 2**256 which are stored there. Each of 2**256 integers has a probability associated with it, what you read is governed by this probability. Once you read, the state of the computer collapses to what you read, all the other information is lost.
Shor's algorithm solves this by ensuring that the result is periodic, the period being the solution to the problem. It then performs a Fourier transform on the state. Then reads it and gets the period with high probability.
Re:Uhh... (Score:3, Insightful)
In effect you go back to square one. To simulate N qbits roughly your quantum computer simulator must have the capacity to completely explore 2^N states. It quickly becomes unmanageable, and you revert to the original problem.
Equivalently you can say that if you have the traditional computing power to solve the problems that a given quantum computer would be able to solve easily, then you approximately hav
Re:Uhh... (Score:3, Informative)
Let's try an example: Let's assume that we need only as much precision that we can use a fixed point numer format with a size of one byte. Then a complex number will need 2 bytes, and the vector to just store the quantum state of an n-bit quantum computer will therefore need 2^(n+1) bytes.
According to Wikipedia, there are 6*10^79 atoms in the universe (taking t
Re:Okay, so? (Score:3, Interesting)
Back in the days of enigma and such, when one side upped its computer technology, the other side added a wheel to its cipher machines. That would last a few years and then everybody is upgrading again.
RSA has been around since the 70's, and has remained stable the whole time. It made crypto practical to use, and ended the arms race by making crypto hundreds of orders of magnitude harder to crack. Ditto for modern symmetric ciphers, whi
Re:Uhh... (Score:4, Funny)
It makes promises.
I'm not just gunna break yo' face, i'm going to quantum break yo' face, foo'!
Re:Uhh... (Score:5, Funny)
so you gonna break his face and slam a cardboard box over his head? "no officer, his face is not smashed. however, if you take the box off it might cause it to be smashed or not"
Re:Uhh... (Score:2, Funny)
I quantum-love science!
Re:Uhh... (Score:5, Informative)
Quantum computing provides an algorithm (Shor's), utilizing quantum mechanical manipulations, which factors numbers exponentially faster. Thus, factoring and checking factors takes the same amount of time.
This leads to the undesirable conclusion that encryption and decryption (by an intercepting 3rd party) of a signal take the same amount of time (up to a polynomial equivalence). In other words, the encryption is breakable, since the interceptor need only invest roughly the same amount of computational effort as the sender in order to crack the message.
That is why the creation of a quantum computer would "obsolete" present encryption. The point of quantum encryption is that it is not vulnerable to such attacks.
Re:Uhh... (Score:3, Informative)
Two things... (Score:2)
2. To implement Shor's algorithm, quantum computers have to scale. I don't know how it works but it couldn't possibly check more than 2^n keys at once, where n is the number of qubits.
Naturally if n is large, any key can be cracked. But I doubt that quantum effects scale well. So far it's been about a dozen qubits, and well... 2^12 at once is impressiv
Re:Uhh... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Uhh... (Score:2, Funny)
Encryption algorithms rely on the fact that some problems need an exponential number of 'calculations' to be solved. If b is the number of bits in a key, breaking the encryption needs 2^b steps.
On the other hand in traditional computers, if you have p processors and each can perform n calculations per time unit, then you can perform p.n calculation in total. Increasing p or n gives only a *linear* improvement in performance. This is not enough to match 2^b if b is big enough.
On the
Re:Uhh... (Score:2)
Great, so you can get quadrillions of improperly decoded versions and one good one, hidden in there somewhere. For any good encryption, I don't see how that helps much.
Re:Uhh... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, it is perfectly reasonable to borrow a large sieve with a water tray - which both work on all the grains simultaneously - and then the job becomes doable in hours.
Re:Uhh... (Score:2)
Re:Uhh... (Score:2)
The machine knows that it found the plaintext because it looks like plaintext. [linuxsecurity.com]
Basically, the longer the message is the less chance you have of finding a key that produces a reasonable but incorrect plaintext.
Re:Uhh... (Score:2)
Still have to run that test some ridiculous number of times, and pity whoever has to crack encrypted text with a slight sprinkling of 8-bit-ness in the beginning.
It still won't handle high entropy binary formats very well either, seems.
Re:Uhh... (Score:2)
Re:Software emulation of quantum computing? (Score:2)
As poster above explained, it would take as long as doing it the hard way with a regular computer PLUS the overhead of the simulation.
Mycroft
Whole Article, One page (Score:4, Informative)
Article here [sciam.com]
Bah... (Score:2, Funny)
sweet upgrade (Score:2, Funny)
Trinary digITs here we come!
FUNNY not OT (Score:2)
Good for telco's? (Score:2, Interesting)
Baloney. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Baloney. (Score:2)
I like this proposal. Companies who can't find ten intensely loyal employees probably don't deserve to have secrets.
Re:Baloney. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately cryptographers want some form of quantum repeater--in essence, an elementary form of quantum computer that would overcome distance limitations. A repeater would work through what Albert Einstein famously called "spukhafte Fernwirkungen," spooky action at a distance. Anton Zeilinger and his colleagues at the Institute of Experimental Physics in Vienna, Austria, took an early step toward a repeater when they reported in the August 19, 2004, issue of Nature that their group had strung an optical-fiber cable in a sewer tunnel under the Danube River and stationed an "entangled" photon at each end. The measurement of the state of polarization in one photon (horizontal, vertical, and so on) establishes immediately an identical polarization that can be measured in the other.
And it continues on this page http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&arti cleID=000479CD-F58C-11BE-AD0683414B7F0000&pageNumb er=3&catID=2
Lazy? (Score:2)
Because I think that, I also think research (particularly emprical reseach) into black holes and entanglement is a "good thing" regardless of it's potential value. Albert (who like slashdotters could not underst
Re:Lazy? (Score:2)
However, the experiment has since been done, and the uncertainty principle still holds. The "Spooky Action" is an observable event.
Now I don't understand exactly how, but they said that they can use this to create quantum relays in the transmission of the message.
Re:Baloney. (Score:2)
In terms of cryptography only, quantum is next-gen. It obsoletes assymetric key crypto.
> one might as well use tremendous, digital one-time pads.
Except that OTPs are insecure without a quantum key exchange.
> generate terabytes of noise, store it on a RAID
Storing the key to a one-time pad would just be stupid.
> no amount of quantum hocus-pocus will be able to decode it.
An attacker won't need quantum hocus-pocus if you generate the ke
Re:Baloney. (Score:2)
Think outside of the box. Bounce the laser light off of a satellite. Directly communicate with planets and spaceships. That's where most of the communication will be occurring within 100 years.
Re:Baloney. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Baloney. (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmm, I don't know who you work for, but I suggest hiring someone with a Clue.
Banks, by and large, do not use asymmetric cryptography like RSA to secure their transactions. The standard for retail and wholesale banking environments is Triple DES, and it's not likely to change for some time, since they've only just finished moving there.
Keys are distributed by loading them into secure, tamper-responsive devices in a trusted environment where no sniffing can occur; then the devices are sent to where they
Re:Baloney. (Score:2)
Wait till DVD Jon hears about this (Score:2, Funny)
TFA is quite ..umm.. cryptic (Score:2, Informative)
Ok, if yo
Re:TFA is quite ..umm.. cryptic (Score:4, Insightful)
Who said using it on current networks? In real life, custom networks are used, of course.
Sending information faster than light is likely not possible. The FAQ you linked to says that too. Currently, theory says no, and experiment can't tell. Some have chosen to interpret their experiments as supporting FTL transmission of information. But the majority do not agree with that interpretation.
Using photons in computers in any form is so far off that suggesting it as a solution to current day problems like die size vs clock speed is ridiculous.
Re:TFA is quite ..umm.. cryptic (Score:2, Informative)
Not so. My girlfriend [hw.ac.uk] is working on this. They have managed to send keys at large data-rates over conventional networks up to a distance of several tens of kilometers. In fibre networks, this distance approaches the pitch of the amplifiers.
You are right about not being able to amplify the signal
Re:TFA is quite ..umm.. cryptic (Score:5, Informative)
what, me worry? (Score:2, Funny)
scary stuff....however, a simpsons quote comes to mind:
Alien 1: It seems the earthlings won.
Alien 2: Did they? That board with a nail in it may have defeated us. But the humans won't stop there. They'll make bigger boards and bigger nails, and soon, they will make a board with a nail so big, it will destroy them all!
[both alie
That's not what the Uncertainty Principle says (Score:2, Informative)
If someone tries to intercept this stream of photons--call her Eve--she cannot measure both modes, thanks to Heisenberg.
That's wrong. The Uncertainty Principle merely states that an observer cannot measure both position and momentum with arbitrary precision.
Re:That's not what the Uncertainty Principle says (Score:5, Informative)
Quantum Encryption is Not Encryption (Score:5, Informative)
The problem lies in that you have to have a single, unbroken fiber optic connection between the two points, and this fiber optic connection is very limited in the amount of loss that it can withstand. That means you're geographically limited on how far the circuit might be able to travel. You're looking at a few hundred kilometers, at the absolute maximum.
Considering the amount of money you'd spend on putting the circuit in place versus the amount of money you'd lose if the data was compromised, it's very unlikely that anyone, anywhere will have a practical use for QKD/QE. Government and defense, maybe, but then only in very limited applications.
There is a chance that, should quantum computing become a reality and modern encryption algorithms can suddenly be cracked very, very easily that this method may see some use, and by no means is development a waste of time and effort. But, QC is still very much in the early stages, if a working system is ever developed at all.
Thta being said, PKI and courier delivery of key material will continue to be the order of the day for quite some time.
Re:Quantum Encryption is Not Encryption (Score:2)
Unless you want to have a completely secure network of computers. Make a grid out of them and you cover the whole country. Every node will have to be as secure as the origin and destination, but likely these will be the nodes themselves, so no harm done. Also it may be possible to use layers of encryption, so that every node to node link carries message encrypted for some other node, and thus no single bre
Re:Quantum Encryption is Not Encryption (Score:2)
I don't know if I can make this clear, but I'll (Score:5, Informative)
Particles that are treated best by quantum theory (such as photons, here) exhibit quantum states. Just think of them as metainformation about the particle, which is accurate to a first approximation and appropriate for this explanation. In this case, the light is polarized, which dictates some of its quantum metainformation.
The Heisenberg principle, which you've probably heard about, says that you cannot know the position and momentum of a particle exactly, simultaneously. You can know one or the other exactly, you can know both with noninfinitesimal error, but you can't know both. For big, heavy things, like macroscopic objects, the uncertainty is so small as to be irrelevant.
The quantum weirdness which results is as follows: an unobserved object simultaneously exists in a linear combination of multiple quantum states. That is, it exists as
(x*A+y*B+z*C)/(x+y+z)
Where A,B,C are quantum states and x,y,z are relative probabilities. If they add to 1, the x+y+z term falls out.
This is where schrodinger's cat. If you wait exactly long enough that the probability of the cat dying is 50%, the cat is exactly equal parts dead and alive. It's accurate, but I think it's confusing because it confuses the fact that quantum states really only apply to very small things, except in isolated cases like this.
Where the unbreakability of quantum encryption comes in is the observer. If you open the box, the cat is no longer both, it's just dead or alive. If you look at the photon, it's A,B, or C. You have destroyed the metainformation contained in the photon, because up until when you observed it, it was x parts A, y parts B, and z parts C.
This is unavoidable and fundamental to quantum mechanics.
For quantum encryption/communication not to work this way, we have to be wrong about quantum mechanics, and the fact that it's just so WEIRD is part of the reason I suspect it will work. It's so counterintuitive people have verified this many times.
Re:I don't know if I can make this clear, but I'll (Score:2, Insightful)
At any given moment, a quantum particle is having its wave equation collapsed by an interaction with another particle. The key to understanding this is that even though the wave has collapsed, it is not really collapsed and will continue to transmit and collapse.
It is a HUGE misconception that the cat is equally alive or dead, being as those are two fundamentally mutually exclusive propertie
Re:I don't know if I can make this clear, but I'll (Score:2, Informative)
The problem is that everyone wants to turn this cat into a magical cat that is 50% dead. The problem is that the cat is being observed ALL THE TIME. The particles of the cat are "observed" (what a terrible choice of words) by other particles interacting with it. This is why the cat exists at all.
If you were to try to clai
The big question.... (Score:4, Funny)
So the big question is: Why does Alice have so many secrets? Why does she feel compelled to tell Bob everything? And what is up with Eve, always budding in?
Personally I think there's something going on between Eve and Bob, that they're not telling us. But damned if I can't break their code.
yo.
Could it break the "unbreakable" method? (Score:2)
In my job as a contractor for a government agency, I've had the opportunity to read a lot about the history of crytopgrahy and code breaking. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that one time pads are unbreakable (when properly created and handled). Does quantum computing affect this unbreakability?
Re:Could it break the "unbreakable" method? (Score:2)
Right On Time! (Score:2)
Easy explination of Quantum Encryption.... (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, Due to Quantum Mechanics, Bob only has a 50% chance of actually reading the state of the photon. 50% of the time he gets '0' or '1', and 50% of the time he gets 'Unknown', and the photon is destroyed..
This is ok, because after receiving 1 million bits, Bob phones up Alice on an unsecured line and says I managed to read photon numbers 5,6,9,12,13,16....(+ approx 500,000 more), so I will use the state of these photons as a one time pad. Alice looks up the states she sent these photons, and now both parties have a one time pad to encrypt data.
Now, lets say there was an intruder attempting to intercept the key exchange. The intruder is also constrained QM, and can only read 50% of the photons, with the other 50% Destroyed. Because, the 50% of photons the intruder would receive, would be different to the 50% bob had read, it is impossible for the hacker to use the information sent using by bob to Alice, via the unsecured phone call, to build an equivalent one time pad.
Also, as the intruder is only able to forward a exact copy of just 50% of the photons to Bob, with the other 50%, now destroyed. He could replace this 50% of photons with his own set of random state photons, but this will be detected by Bob and Alice, as the one time pads would be different on this 50%, and the transmitted data using the pads would be corrupted.
Ummm... (Score:2, Interesting)
Alice is sending a key to Bob. Hacker intercepts the key exchange and sends his own key to Bob. Bob tries to report back, but is also intercepted. He reports back to hacker which bits he got of the hacker's key, hacker reports back to Alice which bits he got of Alice's key. Then the hacker sits in the middle reencrypting on-the-fly.
Personally, I thought it was only good to transfer messages securely. F
Re:Easy explination of Quantum Encryption.... (Score:2, Insightful)
I've said it a million times, and I guess I have to say a million times more: Quantum crypto doesn't protect against an active Monkey-in-the-middle attack! And thus it is not the perfect uncrackable holy grail everybody is so hyped up about.
Nothing to see here, move along...
--Blerik
Pure Random Numbers (Score:2)
Damn Heizenberg! (Score:2, Funny)
Technology VS. Laws (Score:3, Interesting)
Only theory stands in the way.... (Score:2)
Question (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Quantum Encryption (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, you think wrong. Quantum encryption cannot be 'brute-forced'. Because it's not 'encryption' in the conventional sense but rather 'secure transmission'. The data is not encoded, but rather transmitted in a way which makes eavesdropping impossible. Since you can't intercept any 'coded message', there is nothing for you to brute-force.
And this holds as long as what we know of quantum mechanics holds.
(More specifically, the Bell inequality [ucr.edu]. Which was verified in the famous Aspect experiment.)
So no, nothing in quantum physics is going to invalidate quantum encryption. And I wouldn't get my hopes up for future theories, either, because this 'wierdness' of quantum mechanics so well-verified experimentally that it'd be unlikely that any future theory would change it. (But hopefully explain it)
Re:Quantum Encryption (Score:2)
You still encrypt the final message. All the quantum part does is tell you when a third party has intercepted your data stream. It does not prevent a person from reading it.
So what you do is you generate a random key and transmit that to the other person. The key is random junk that will be used to encrypt the final message. If a person reads this you can detect it and all you do is recreate the key and try again.
You just keep trying to send a new random key until it is sent wi
Re:Quantum Encryption (Score:2)
That is not quite right either. Because by intercepting the data, you alter it. I didn't say it physically prevented anyone from reading it - I said it prevented eavesdropping. And if you're changing the data, (and it's detectable too) then that's hardly 'eavesdropping' is it? Communication is not possible at all if someone is listening in, since the data is being destro
Re:Quantum Encryption (Score:2)
No that doesn't work. Using the quantum technique does not prevent a third party from reading the information. So if I send a message to you using the quantum method you may recieve garbage, but the third party will have read the information fine and will know what I just sent. That kind of defeats the purpose of wanting to encrypt something.
Quantum en
Re:Quantum Encryption (Score:2)
I was wrong about being able to send any information using quantum mechanics. The probability of being able to read any individual bit is 50%. So you can only ever read 50% of any message.
However, you can then contact the other person and tell them which photons you were able to read, and use those photons as the key.
Re:Quantum Encryption (Score:2)
No, we won't. It's an interesting thought, but it doesn't work that way. According to the laws of physics (as we currently understand them) quantum encryption, if done properly, is provably secure. That is, there is no way to break the encryption, unless quantum mechanics itself is flawed.
Of course, there are other attacks. For example, QC (quantum cryptography) requires you to pick the polarization basis r
Re:Quantum Encryption (Score:2)
Re:Don't verb adjectives (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, there's two very different uses of quantum technology when applied to crypto problems:
1. If you had a quantum computer some problems like factorization become easy; therefore things like RSA would be instantly decryptable. The gotcha is that the current "state of the art" for quantum computers are still absolutely tiny and there are HUGE engineering challenges towards building one large enough to factor a real key (I think they're at the point now where they can factor numbers like "12"... so they have a bit of scaling before they can start attacking 300-digit numbers)
Of course there could be a massive breakthrough in quantum computer design tomorrow which would throw the whole crypto world on its head. That makes this area really interesting for crypto people.
Does NSA secretly have a quantum computer that can do that? I'd say its extremely unlikely... I'm sure they have people looking into it but they would have to be AMAZINGLY far ahead of the public research community to have actually built a full-size one.
2. What this article is talking about is "quantum encryption" what's really "quantum" about it is making an untappable fiber line by signalling using the characteristics of single photons. By using Heisenberg's uncertainty principal you can make it impossible for anyone to tap the line (and thus observe the photon states) without also randomizing the bits. It's really hard to get your head around but it actually works.
Note that nowhere here did we use a "quantum computer"... this is all using technology that exists today (obviously, since you can buy it)
So basically even if your adversary has a trillion dollar budget to attack you with they CANNOT tap that fiber line without destroying the communication in the process. It's physically not possible with any technology.
So unless the NSA has a whole undiscovered field of physics that the world doesn't know about they don't have "quantum decyption" As we understand physics today it's literally impossible to build such a device.
Re:Don't verb adjectives (Score:2, Funny)
Actually, they do! And the infinite improbability field that it generated is the true reason behind the November election results.
Re:Don't verb adjectives (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Don't verb adjectives (Score:2)
Re:Don't verb adjectives (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Don't verb adjectives (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Don't verb adjectives (Score:2, Insightful)
No, what he's attempting to do is describe entanglement - the presently baffling feature of quantum mechanices. As Heisenberg would tell you, any attempt to measure the state of a photon (an entangled pair of a photon in this case) will in fact alter the state of the photon itself and consequently sound an alarm bell if the data (many photons!) is corrupt at the other end. However, a sub-atomic group in Paris - ENS- have mad
Re:Don't verb adjectives (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Don't verb adjectives (Score:5, Insightful)
So, you could send a key to the other end, but it wouldn't be the same key that you received, because the key is created during the exchange based on which photons were encoded in the same orientation they were measured. So, any protocol that uses this has to be designed to take advantage of this property to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks. Apparently the crypto boys and girls feel this is enough of an advantage to be done--I haven't inspected any protocols that do this, so I can't explain how it's achieved. But simply sending a long key and XORing the message with it isn't enough--the man in the middle could foil that by just generating a new key and reencrypting.
I'm sure someone has a good discussion of this up on the web. The question is if there's one that's accessible to the non-cryptographer.
Re:Don't verb adjectives (Score:4, Interesting)
One such example is the innocuously named "Laboratory for Physical Sciences [umd.edu]". Please note the rather conspicuous key-shaped logo. I toured their facility a few years back while looking for a job. At the time the NSA was buying them just about anything they wanted provided it might have applications in quantum computing. This included a rather sophisticated chip fabrication lab and clean room.
I don't know if we will ever really have quantum computers, but the NSA sure doesn't want to be late to the party if we do.
Re:Don't verb adjectives (Score:2)
It's a bit of a misleading name, but the actual encryption part of these techniques is the one time pad which has been a known technique for a long time now. It is mathmatically proven to be impossible to break a one time pad as long as you use a truely random key.
The quantum part of this new technique is just the method of transmitting the key to the other person. With it you can guarantee that no one else has listened in and knows what the key is.
Re:Don't verb adjectives (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ridiculously overblown (Score:4, Insightful)
Quantum encryption is not about exchanging keys, its not even encryption in its normal sense. What it really is, is secure trasmission.
Secure meaning, nobody can read this data during transmission other than the reciever without it being physically impossible to notice.
Re:Ridiculously overblown (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ridiculously overblown (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no relation between quantum "encryption" and RSA. Quantum computers are a completely different technology than quantum key distribution. All you need for the latter is fiber optic cable, some photon counters, and polarizing filters. Quantum computers OTOH require quantum circuits, which are no more than lab toys ATM. It could be 50 years before we see sizable quantum computers, if ever.
Even
Re:Ridiculously overblown (Score:3, Informative)
Any public-private key encryption can be broken through brute force. What keeps them secure is that most of the time it takes a long time to break them.
With the development of quantum computers (which some people believe can be done within the next 20 years) it will only take a few seconds to break ANY public/private key encrypted message.
A message sent using quantum encryption cannot be broken by brute force.
Re:fp (Score:2)
And an inside job will always prove unstoppable. "Treachery is the primary way," observes Seth Lloyd, an expert in quantum computation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "There's nothing quantum mechanics can do about that."
Re:i once read.. (Score:2)
A properly implimented one time pad using a truly random key is impossible to crack.
Quantum encryption is based on the one time pad, and it overcomes the weakness of how you guarantee your key has been transmitted to the other person without anyone else knowing it.
Re:Heisenburg (Score:2)
Actually, following Heisenburg dictum (using analog methods, of course), it's more along the lines of you popping up where it is - make sure to wear clean underware at all times while you wait.
Anyone seen John? He was right here a minute ago...
Re:Q/C is a term (hopefully) 'coined' by distantbo (Score:2)
An unsolved problem, however, is how to build larger quantum computers. Maybe it's impossible in practice to get more than a few individually controllable qubits sufficiently protected from the environment. But that's quite a different
Re:Hello Slartibartfast (Score:2)
New project you say... Can I bring my friends? Will I be famous? You seem friendly - come over here and let me show you my latest...quite nice, I think.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
And it's a code which is hard to change. Say one of the group changes sides, then your whole investment in that code (creating a complete langu
Re:Why? (Score:2)
This sort of encryption was used a lot in World War 1 where they would take words and phrases and replace them with other words. For example a single word "keyboard" may mean "Arial attack". These sorts of codes were broken. Usually by people good at crosswords.
A more famous case of decrypting this sort of cypher is Egyptian Hyroglyphics. Sure they were never ment to be a code bu