Quantum Key Distribution: Securing IoT, WiFi, Cell Phones
Stevens Prototype Quantum Lock May Foreshadow The Next Supersecure Applications
Excerpts and salient points ~
+ “These quantum properties are going to change the internet,” predicts Huang, who directs the university’s Center for Quantum Science & Engineering and works with graduate students including Lac Nguyen and Jeeva Ramanathan on the quantum lock project. “One big way it will do that is in the enabling of security applications like this one, except on much larger scales.
“If it turns out this technology can be deployed in our homes and offices, as we believe it can be, eavesdroppers will be nearly powerless to sneak into the ever-more connected networks of devices that help run our lives but also hold much of our personal data.”
+ As facial photos are taken by the video camera, lasers in Huang’s physics lab create twin photons — tiny, power-packed particles of energy — by splitting beams of light with special crystals.
+ The twin photons are then separated. One photon is kept in the lab while the other is sent through fiber-optic lines back to the library. Complex, secret “keys” are instantly generated as the photons are detected at each site; this process will ensure that the secure information meets up with a trusted partner at the other end of the transaction.
+ The keys serve as what’s known in cryptography as a “one-time pad”: a temporary, uncrackable code between the parties that encrypt the images and communications, preventing any hacker from intercepting them.
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