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Quantum silicon chip — Parallax Forums

Quantum silicon chip

HollyMinkowskiHollyMinkowski Posts: 1,398
edited 2009-09-07 00:33 in General Discussion
Some Brits have reduced the table full of equipment needed to work
with entangled photons down to an optical silicon chip.... this is just too cool!
www.newscientist.com/article/dn17736-codebreaking-quantum-algorithm-run-on-a-silicon-chip.html
dn17736-2_800.jpg

dn17736-1_300.jpg


Public key algos may not have much life left in them.
We seem to be close to the ability to factor very large numbers with
these sorts of optical chips.

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Comments

  • xanatosxanatos Posts: 1,120
    edited 2009-09-06 16:25
    Very cool, thanks for that. Cryptography is what finally got me to love mathematics, and advanced crypto still gets me hooked every time. Now I want to see them take that factors of 15 thing up to working with prime numbers up in the 10^14 range! We could see encryption with numbers so huge in application they could startle an astronomer!

    Dave
  • LeonLeon Posts: 7,620
    edited 2009-09-06 19:07
    Quantum cryptographic equipment is available from id Quantique:

    www.idquantique.com/

    Leon

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    Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
    Suzuki SV1000S motorcycle
  • mctriviamctrivia Posts: 3,772
    edited 2009-09-06 19:29
    xanatos we can already do encryption with huge numbers this is talking about making that encryption totally useless. If they can extend this to the order you are talking about then the only encryption algorithm that would be safe is OTP.

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  • xanatosxanatos Posts: 1,120
    edited 2009-09-06 23:18
    Mctrivia, yes, I understand that, I was simply not clear enough in my statement, sorry. This stuff will make our current encryption useless, what I was more directly alluding to was at what speed will this device decrypt- right now it could take a computer months or longer to decrypt a message... With prime factors in the magnitudes I mention, would it now only take hours, or minutes... Or seconds? And the new levels of encryption we can generate with this technology, that's where the trans-astronomical numbers come in.

    Problem is, that as is always the case, in short order, there will be a counter technology that will come along and find a way to decrypt the new system... Always a one-step-ahead/behind sort of thing.

    Dave
  • mctriviamctrivia Posts: 3,772
    edited 2009-09-06 23:23
    i am by no means an expert on quantum computing but i believe the principle is the computer tries every possible combination simultaneously. in other words a large enough quantum computer could crack any encryption method except OTP almost instantaneous. This kind of attack will not work on OTP because it is not algebraic in nature.

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  • xanatosxanatos Posts: 1,120
    edited 2009-09-07 00:24
    Ah... OK. Non-algebraic. That's what I was missing. Still, someone will find a way to crack an OTP encryption, given the time. Remember how they said that RSA was "unbreakable"! smile.gif

    Dave
  • mctriviamctrivia Posts: 3,772
    edited 2009-09-07 00:33
    The germans used OTP during world war 2 and the alieds maniged to crack it. They maniged to crack it because the Germans did not use a perfectly random key.

    However if done correctly OTP is uncrackable. the difficulty is in doing it correctly. You need a long true random key and you must always deliver this key by physical means.

    It is strange how the most sympolist of encryption methods is the safest.


    How to do OTP:
    1) Generate extremely long truely random key
    2) deliver key to recipient by trusted courier.
    3) xor your message with the key.
    4) discard bits of key that you used.
    5) transmit encrypted message to recipient using any unsafe method.
    6) recipient xor encrypted method with key to get original message.
    7) recipient discards used bits.

    the beauty of this is any message could mean anything. even if the encrypted message came to

    "jump off a bridge"

    which would be unlikely but possible. the unencrypted message could be anything. most of the time the encrypted message will look like gibberish though occasionally it does look like an actual sentence. The only way it can be cracked is if the key is not truely random, you reuse parts of key, or the curiour is compromised.

    ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
    propmod_us and propmod_1x1 are in stock. Only $30. PCB available for $5

    Want to make projects and have Gadget Gangster sell them for you? propmod-us_ps_sd and propmod-1x1 are now available for use in your Gadget Gangster Projects.

    Need to upload large images or movies for use in the forum. you can do so at uploader.propmodule.com for free.
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