[cdg] Computer News - First quantum cryptography newtwork unveiled
- From: "Donny Duncan" <ravers_deelite@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <cdg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 19:08:47 -0500
Pulled from NewScientist (www.newscientist.com)
First quantum cryptography network unveiled
The first computer network in which communication is secured with quantum
cryptography is up and running in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Chip Elliott, leader of the quantum engineering team at BBN Technologies in
Cambridge, sent the first packets of data across the Quantum Net (Qnet) on
Thursday. The project is funded by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency.
Currently the network only consists of six servers, but they can be integrated
with regular servers and clients on the internet. Qnet's creators say the
implementation of more nodes in banks and credit card companies could make
exchanging sensitive data over the internet more secure than it is with current
cryptography systems.
The data in Qnet flows through ordinary fibre optic cables and stretches the 10
kilometres from BBN to Harvard University. It is encrypted using keys
determined by the exchange of a series of single, polarised photons.
The first money transfer encrypted by quantum keys was performed between two
Austrian financial institutions in April 2004. But Qnet is the first network
consisting of more than two nodes to use quantum cryptography - a more complex
challenge.
"Imagine making a phone call. If you just have one possible receiver, you
wouldn't even need buttons," explains Elliott. "But with a network you need a
system that will connect anyone on the network to anyone else." In Qnet,
software-controlled optical switches made of lithium niobate crystals steer
photons down the correct optical fibre.
Read more here:
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/tech/article.jsp?id=99995076&sub=Computing
Donny Duncan
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