{"id":6516,"date":"2017-02-06T10:32:13","date_gmt":"2017-02-06T18:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/02\/06\/news-344\/"},"modified":"2017-02-06T10:32:13","modified_gmt":"2017-02-06T18:32:13","slug":"news-344","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/02\/06\/news-344\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers\u2019 quantum hacking machine may help protect against quantum computing hacks"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Credit to Author: Darlene Storm | Date: Mon, 06 Feb 2017 08:21:00 -0800<\/strong><\/p>\n

There seems to be no form of computing which is safe from hacking, but some, such as the Chinese, have pinned their hopes on quantum computing having uncrackable communications. Yet University of Ottawa researchers have managed to build \u201cthe first high-dimensional quantum cloning machine capable of performing quantum hacking to intercept a secure quantum message.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, China launched<\/a> the world\u2019s first known quantum communications satellite; the Chinese believed its Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QUESS<\/a>) satellite was a step toward \u201ccreating an unhackable communications system.\u201d While it may seem like the Canadian researchers have poked holes in the dream of secure quantum communications, the opposite may actually be true.<\/p>\n

That is because after building the quantum cloning machine that could perform quantum hacking and capture \u201csecure\u201d quantum messages, the research team believes it may have uncovered ways that would help protect against such hacking. University of Ottawa Department of Physics professor Ebrahim Karimi said<\/a>, \u201cOnce we were able to analyze the results, we discovered some very important clues to help protect quantum computing networks against potential hacking threats.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the University of Ottawa:<\/p>\n

Quantum systems were believed to provide perfectly secure data transmission because until now, attempts to copy the transmitted information resulted in an altered or deteriorated version of the original information, thereby defeating the purpose of the initial hack. Traditional computing allows a hacker to simply copy and paste information and replicate it exactly, but this doesn\u2019t hold true in the quantum computing world, where attempts to copy quantum information-or qudits-result in what Karimi refers to as \u201cbad\u201d copies.<\/p>\n

The research team cloned \u201cthe photons that transmit information, namely the single carriers of light known as qubits;\u201d the clones were not 100 percent perfect, but \u201cwere almost exact replicas of the original information.\u201d Not only were they able to undermine \u201cwhat was previously thought to be a perfect way of securely transmitting information, the researchers\u2019 analyses revealed promising clues into how to protect against such hacking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canadian researchers Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Bouchard, Robert Fickler, Robert W. Boyd and Ebrahim Karimi provided a \u201csimplified sketch\u201d of their experimental cloning machine in the team\u2019s paper, High-dimensional quantum cloning and applications to quantum hacking<\/a>, which was published in the journal Science Advances<\/em> on Friday.<\/p>\n

While the entire topic is admittedly far over my head, the concept of Alice and Bob and eavesdropping Eve is not. The researchers included an image of high dimensional quantum key distribution (QKD<\/a>) with and without quantum hacking. Eve\u2019s attempt to read the message (the bottom image) alters the original.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we found was that when larger amounts of quantum information are encoded on a single photon, the copies will get worse and hacking even simpler to detect,\u201d said researcher Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Bouchard. \u201cWe were also able to show that cloning attacks introduce specific, observable noises in a secure quantum communication channel. Ensuring photons contain the largest amount of information possible and monitoring these noises in a secure channel should help strengthen quantum computing networks against potential hacking threats.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Karim told<\/a> the South Morning China Post that he believes his team has come up with a \u201cfeasible method to bypass the quantum check,\u201d unnamed Chinese researchers seemed to scoff at the idea of it being an \u201cimminent threat.\u201d One unnamed quantum physicist went so far as to state, \u201cI don\u2019t think the Canadian machine can hack. If it did, the world of physics would collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team hopes that others will use their quantum hacking efforts \u201cto study quantum communication systems, or more generally to study how quantum information travels across quantum computer networks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a link to the full version of High-dimensional quantum cloning and applications to quantum hacking<\/a>.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.computerworld.com\/category\/security\/index.rss<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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There seems to be no form of computing which is safe from hacking, but some, such as the Chinese, have pinned their hopes on quantum computing having uncrackable communications. Yet University of Ottawa researchers have managed to build \u201cthe first high-dimensional quantum cloning machine capable of performing quantum hacking to intercept a secure quantum message.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, China launched<\/a> the world\u2019s first known quantum communications satellite; the Chinese believed its Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QUESS<\/a>) satellite was a step toward \u201ccreating an unhackable communications system.\u201d While it may seem like the Canadian researchers have poked holes in the dream of secure quantum communications, the opposite may actually be true.<\/p>\n

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[11062,10643],"tags":[11070,11220,714],"class_list":["post-6516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computerworld","category-independent","tag-emerging-technology","tag-high-performance-computing-hpc","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}