Quantum crypto moves out of the lab

Quantum crypto moves out of the lab
John Leyden, The Register 2005-04-28

Quantum cryptography - long the stuff of cyberpunk novels and hi-tech spy stories - is leaving the laboratory and making its way into commercial markets. A briefing session at the UK's Department of Trade and Industry on Wednesday featured demonstrations of working quantum key exchange systems by QinetiQ, Toshiba Cambridge and US start-up MagiQ.

Expand all | Post comment

Quantum crypto moves out of the lab 2005-04-28
Anonymous (1 replies)

How it works 2005-05-01
Roger

Quantum crypto looks fishy 2005-04-29
Skeptical

Quantum crypto moves out of the lab 2005-04-30
rhale

Quantum crypto moves out of the lab 2005-05-02
Anonymous

It's certainly nice that quantum cryptography makes it impossible to eavesdrop on the communication. But what about man-in-the-middle attacks? If some attacker can 'cut the wire' and put a device in between the two open ends, which forwards traffic between both sides (while copying the data somewhere presumably), this nicely hyped 'crypto' would immediately become useless. And this is of course a realistic scenario, why would you want to use encryption on a line if you're sure nobody can touch it? So, I would say that promoting this thing for 'encryption', and even more so for key exchange, is rather foolish.

[ reply ]

Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/articles/11046/31746#31746