Quantum Key Distribution for Cryptography

[John Clark]

Chinese researchers report in the journal Nature that they have used quantum entanglement and a satellite to send a Cryptographic key over a record distance of 1120 Kilometers as securely as the laws of physics allow and do so with unprecedented speed and low error rates. The transmission speed was about one bit every eight seconds, that may sound slow but it's several orders of magnitude faster than anything done before, and you'd only be using it to send the cryptographic key, not an entire message. If quantum computers become practical it may be the only form of cryptography that still works. US researchers say it would take at least three years to equal what the Chinese have done.

Entanglement-based secure quantum cryptography over 1,120 kilometres

John K Clark

[Jason Resch]

I view quantum cryptography as mostly hype.

Quantum cryptography doesn't solve the problem of authentication which is the main challenge when distributing keys (i.e., ensuring the right person is getting them, rather than merely ensuring they weren't intercepted).

The other reason I think it is hype is that it is already obsolete. There is a large number of proposed classical algorithms for implementing traditional cryptographic schemes (key agreement, digital signatures, public key encryption, etc.) and are believed immune from quantum attacks.

Microsoft and Google already have experiments integrating it into TLS (the protocol underlying https). NIST is currently working on standardizing PQS (post-quantum secure) algorithms: https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/Post-Quantum-Cryptography.

Jason

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[Lawrence Crowell]

Quantum encryption or cryptography is a specialized niche. I am not sure how a classical system can be robust against interlopers in the way a quantum channel is, for such would results in a disruption of the wave function. Maybe some clever use of a quantum eraser might get around this. 

Quantum computing will at least for some time be a niche area. It might be more generally applied, but computers will have an array of specialized processors, say neural nets, quantum processors and others, which the main CPU will access when needed. I suspect for some time the standard Turing-von Neumann type processor will be at the hub,

LC

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