RE: EU seeks quantum cryptography response to Echelon
On Tue, 18 May 2004, Tyler Durden wrote: Monyk believes there will be a global market of several million users once a workable solution has been developed. A political decision will have to be taken as to who those users will be in order to prevent terrorists and criminals from taking advantage of the completely secure communication network, he said. Hope the technology hits the streets fast enough after getting on the market. Monyk apparently doesn't believe that people who don't have the money to buy the Official Approval have no right to access to this technology. Silliness itself, at this point. Practical quantum cryptography at this point is limited to transmission. The moment it goes O/E, it's as vulnerable as any other data. And terrorists aren't going to bother splicing fiber. There are quite many important activities that don't require storage of the transported data. For example, very very few people record their phone calls.
RE: EU seeks quantum cryptography response to Echelon
Thomas Shaddack wrote... There are quite many important activities that don't require storage of the transported data. For example, very very few people record their phone calls. Storage wasn't my point per se. My point was that quantum cryptography only becomes unsnoopable* when it's in the optical form. With current optical fiber technologies this would limit the useful bandwidth distance product to short distances (ie, 10s of Km for key exchanges). After that, the signal must go O/E and then it's just the same as any normal digital signal. Where Quantum Crypto might have application is in small metro area deployments, like downtown NYC or the DC Beltway, and where people are completely totally balls-to-the-wall paranoid about security (ie, they assume an attacker is willing to tap into their fiber and has all of the test sets needed to pull out a useful packet exchange--that ain't no pimply-face DoS script bunny, and hell it ain't Al Qaeda either). Of course, to extend quantum protection beyond mere transport you'd need all sorts of quantum logic gates and processors (in addition to storage), but don't look for that in our lifetimes. -TD *: With quantum crypto it is of course possible to 'eavesdrop', depending on the coding, but that will cause the eavesdropper to quickly be revealed. _ Express yourself with the new version of MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
RE: EU seeks quantum cryptography response to Echelon
Tom Shaddack wrote: On Tue, 18 May 2004, Tyler Durden wrote: Monyk believes there will be a global market of several million users once a workable solution has been developed. A political decision will have to be taken as to who those users will be in order to prevent terrorists and criminals from taking advantage of the completely secure communication network, he said. Hope the technology hits the streets fast enough after getting on the market. Monyk apparently doesn't believe that people who don't have the money to buy the Official Approval have no right to access to this technology. Actually, I read this as the sort of puffery we more often see from the snake-oil vendors; Our proprietary Auto Generated One Time Pad (TM) crypto is s strong that the government may ban it - get it while you can! Peter
RE: EU seeks quantum cryptography response to Echelon
Boondoggle. A solution in search of a problem: Monyk believes there will be a global market of several million users once a workable solution has been developed. A political decision will have to be taken as to who those users will be in order to prevent terrorists and criminals from taking advantage of the completely secure communication network, he said. Silliness itself, at this point. Practical quantum cryptography at this point is limited to transmission. The moment it goes O/E, it's as vulnerable as any other data. And terrorists aren't going to bother splicing fiber. Of course, primitive quantum storage (with error correcting codes!) is possible and done in laboratories, but we're talking tens of bits here. It'll be a decade before quantum storage is practical, and that's only IF someone can find a convincing reason to start developing it. -TD From: R. A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: EU seeks quantum cryptography response to Echelon Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 14:32:34 -0400 http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0517euseeks.html Network World Fusion EU seeks quantum cryptography response to Echelon By Philip Willan IDG News Service, 05/17/04 The European Union is to invest ¤11 million ($13 million) over the next four years to develop a secure communication system based on quantum cryptography, using physical laws governing the universe on the smallest scale to create and distribute unbreakable encryption keys, project coordinators said Monday. If successful, the project would produce the cryptographer's holy grail -- absolutely unbreakable code -- and thwart the eavesdropping efforts of espionage systems such as Echelon, which intercepts electronic messages on behalf of the intelligence services of the U.S., the U.K., Canada, New Zealand and Australia. The aim is to produce a communication system that cannot be intercepted by anyone, and that includes Echelon, said Sergio Cova, a professor from the electronics department of Milan Polytechnic and one of the project's coordinators. We are talking about a system that requires significant technological innovations. We have to prove that it is workable, which is not the case at the moment. Major improvements in geographic range and speed of data transmission will be required before the system becomes a commercial reality, Cova said. The report of the European Parliament on Echelon recommends using quantum cryptography as a solution to electronic eavesdropping. This is an effort to cope with Echelon, said Christian Monyk, the director of quantum technologies at the Austrian company ARC Seibersdorf Research and overall coordinator of the project. Economic espionage has caused serious harm to European companies in the past, Monyk said. With this project we will be making an essential contribution to the economic independence of Europe. Quantum cryptography takes advantage of the physical properties of light particles, known as photons, to create and transmit binary messages. The angle of vibration of a photon as it travels through space -- its polarization -- can be used to represent a zero or a one under a system first devised by scientists Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard in 1984. It has the advantage that any attempt to intercept the photons is liable to interfere with their polarization and can therefore be detected by those operating the system, the project coordinators said. An intercepted key would therefore be discarded and a new one created for use in its place. The new system, known as SECOQC (Secure Communication based on Quantum Cryptography), is intended for use by the secure generation and exchange of encryption keys, rather than for the actual exchange of data, Monyk said. The encrypted data would then be transmitted by normal methods, he said. Messages encrypted using quantum mechanics can currently be transmitted over optical fibers for tens of kilometers. The European project intends to extend that range by combining quantum physics with other technologies, Monyk said. The important thing about this project is that it is not based solely on quantum cryptography but on a combination with all the other components that are necessary to achieve an economic application, he said. We are taking a really broad approach to quantum cryptography, which other countries haven't done. Experts in quantum physics, cryptography, software and network development from universities, research institutes and private companies in Austria, Belgium, Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland will be contributing to the project, Monyk said. In 18 months project participants will assess progress on a number of alternative solutions and decide which technologies are the most promising and merit further development, project coordinators said. SECOQC aims to have a workable technology ready in four years, but will probably require three to four
RE: EU seeks quantum cryptography response to Echelon
Tom Shaddack wrote: On Tue, 18 May 2004, Tyler Durden wrote: Monyk believes there will be a global market of several million users once a workable solution has been developed. A political decision will have to be taken as to who those users will be in order to prevent terrorists and criminals from taking advantage of the completely secure communication network, he said. Hope the technology hits the streets fast enough after getting on the market. Monyk apparently doesn't believe that people who don't have the money to buy the Official Approval have no right to access to this technology. Actually, I read this as the sort of puffery we more often see from the snake-oil vendors; Our proprietary Auto Generated One Time Pad (TM) crypto is s strong that the government may ban it - get it while you can! Peter
RE: EU seeks quantum cryptography response to Echelon
On Tue, 18 May 2004, Tyler Durden wrote: Monyk believes there will be a global market of several million users once a workable solution has been developed. A political decision will have to be taken as to who those users will be in order to prevent terrorists and criminals from taking advantage of the completely secure communication network, he said. Hope the technology hits the streets fast enough after getting on the market. Monyk apparently doesn't believe that people who don't have the money to buy the Official Approval have no right to access to this technology. Silliness itself, at this point. Practical quantum cryptography at this point is limited to transmission. The moment it goes O/E, it's as vulnerable as any other data. And terrorists aren't going to bother splicing fiber. There are quite many important activities that don't require storage of the transported data. For example, very very few people record their phone calls.
RE: EU seeks quantum cryptography response to Echelon
Thomas Shaddack wrote... There are quite many important activities that don't require storage of the transported data. For example, very very few people record their phone calls. Storage wasn't my point per se. My point was that quantum cryptography only becomes unsnoopable* when it's in the optical form. With current optical fiber technologies this would limit the useful bandwidth distance product to short distances (ie, 10s of Km for key exchanges). After that, the signal must go O/E and then it's just the same as any normal digital signal. Where Quantum Crypto might have application is in small metro area deployments, like downtown NYC or the DC Beltway, and where people are completely totally balls-to-the-wall paranoid about security (ie, they assume an attacker is willing to tap into their fiber and has all of the test sets needed to pull out a useful packet exchange--that ain't no pimply-face DoS script bunny, and hell it ain't Al Qaeda either). Of course, to extend quantum protection beyond mere transport you'd need all sorts of quantum logic gates and processors (in addition to storage), but don't look for that in our lifetimes. -TD *: With quantum crypto it is of course possible to 'eavesdrop', depending on the coding, but that will cause the eavesdropper to quickly be revealed. _ Express yourself with the new version of MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
RE: EU seeks quantum cryptography response to Echelon
Boondoggle. A solution in search of a problem: Monyk believes there will be a global market of several million users once a workable solution has been developed. A political decision will have to be taken as to who those users will be in order to prevent terrorists and criminals from taking advantage of the completely secure communication network, he said. Silliness itself, at this point. Practical quantum cryptography at this point is limited to transmission. The moment it goes O/E, it's as vulnerable as any other data. And terrorists aren't going to bother splicing fiber. Of course, primitive quantum storage (with error correcting codes!) is possible and done in laboratories, but we're talking tens of bits here. It'll be a decade before quantum storage is practical, and that's only IF someone can find a convincing reason to start developing it. -TD From: R. A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: EU seeks quantum cryptography response to Echelon Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 14:32:34 -0400 http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0517euseeks.html Network World Fusion EU seeks quantum cryptography response to Echelon By Philip Willan IDG News Service, 05/17/04 The European Union is to invest ¤11 million ($13 million) over the next four years to develop a secure communication system based on quantum cryptography, using physical laws governing the universe on the smallest scale to create and distribute unbreakable encryption keys, project coordinators said Monday. If successful, the project would produce the cryptographer's holy grail -- absolutely unbreakable code -- and thwart the eavesdropping efforts of espionage systems such as Echelon, which intercepts electronic messages on behalf of the intelligence services of the U.S., the U.K., Canada, New Zealand and Australia. The aim is to produce a communication system that cannot be intercepted by anyone, and that includes Echelon, said Sergio Cova, a professor from the electronics department of Milan Polytechnic and one of the project's coordinators. We are talking about a system that requires significant technological innovations. We have to prove that it is workable, which is not the case at the moment. Major improvements in geographic range and speed of data transmission will be required before the system becomes a commercial reality, Cova said. The report of the European Parliament on Echelon recommends using quantum cryptography as a solution to electronic eavesdropping. This is an effort to cope with Echelon, said Christian Monyk, the director of quantum technologies at the Austrian company ARC Seibersdorf Research and overall coordinator of the project. Economic espionage has caused serious harm to European companies in the past, Monyk said. With this project we will be making an essential contribution to the economic independence of Europe. Quantum cryptography takes advantage of the physical properties of light particles, known as photons, to create and transmit binary messages. The angle of vibration of a photon as it travels through space -- its polarization -- can be used to represent a zero or a one under a system first devised by scientists Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard in 1984. It has the advantage that any attempt to intercept the photons is liable to interfere with their polarization and can therefore be detected by those operating the system, the project coordinators said. An intercepted key would therefore be discarded and a new one created for use in its place. The new system, known as SECOQC (Secure Communication based on Quantum Cryptography), is intended for use by the secure generation and exchange of encryption keys, rather than for the actual exchange of data, Monyk said. The encrypted data would then be transmitted by normal methods, he said. Messages encrypted using quantum mechanics can currently be transmitted over optical fibers for tens of kilometers. The European project intends to extend that range by combining quantum physics with other technologies, Monyk said. The important thing about this project is that it is not based solely on quantum cryptography but on a combination with all the other components that are necessary to achieve an economic application, he said. We are taking a really broad approach to quantum cryptography, which other countries haven't done. Experts in quantum physics, cryptography, software and network development from universities, research institutes and private companies in Austria, Belgium, Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland will be contributing to the project, Monyk said. In 18 months project participants will assess progress on a number of alternative solutions and decide which technologies are the most promising and merit further development, project coordinators said. SECOQC aims to have a workable technology ready in four years, but will probably require three to four