From: <http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100829/full/news.2010.436.html>
Quantum hackers have performed the first 'invisible' attack on two commercial quantum cryptographic systems...they have fully cracked their encryption keys, yet left no trace of the hack..."Our hack gave 100% knowledge of the key, with zero disturbance to the system," he says...In Makarov and colleagues' hack, Eve [blinds] Bob's detector — shining a continuous, 1-milliwatt laser at it. While Bob's detector is thus disabled, Eve can then intercept Alice's signal...The cunning part is that while blinded, Bob's detector cannot function as a 'quantum detector' that distinguishes between different quantum states of incoming light. However, it does still work as a 'classical detector' — recording a bit value of 1 if it is hit by an additional bright light pulse, regardless of the quantum properties of that pulse. ---- Michael HEyman --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majord...@metzdowd.com