U.S. Hatches Plan To Build a Quantum Internet That Might Be 'Unhackable' (washingtonpost.com) 75
U.S. officials and scientists unveiled a plan this week to pursue what they called one of the most important technological frontiers of the 21st century: building a quantum Internet. From a report: Speaking in Chicago, one of the main hubs of the work, they set goals for forging what they called a second Internet -- one that would function alongside the globe's existing networks, using the laws of quantum mechanics to share information more securely and to connect a new generation of computers and sensors. Quantum technology seeks to harness the distinct properties of atoms, photons and electrons to build more powerful computers and other tools for processing information. A quantum Internet relies on photons exhibiting a quantum state known as entanglement, which allows them to share information over long distances without having a physical connection.
David Awschalom, a professor at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, called the Internet project a pillar of the nation's quantum-research program. "It's the birth of a new technology. It's becoming a global competition. Every major country on earth has launched a quantum program ... because it is becoming clearer and clearer there will be big impacts," he said in an interview. The United States' top technology rival, China, is investing heavily in quantum technology, a field that could transform information processing and confer big economic and national security advantages to countries that dominate it. Europe is also hotly pursuing the research. The Energy Department and its 17 national labs will form the backbone of the project.
David Awschalom, a professor at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, called the Internet project a pillar of the nation's quantum-research program. "It's the birth of a new technology. It's becoming a global competition. Every major country on earth has launched a quantum program ... because it is becoming clearer and clearer there will be big impacts," he said in an interview. The United States' top technology rival, China, is investing heavily in quantum technology, a field that could transform information processing and confer big economic and national security advantages to countries that dominate it. Europe is also hotly pursuing the research. The Energy Department and its 17 national labs will form the backbone of the project.
Just like the internet of today, (Score:5, Funny)
it will both be there and not be there.
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Fully buzzword compliant. Funding approved.
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Well, ain't this a quantum of solace.
Prediction: (Score:4, Informative)
Will be "hacked" within 24 hours of its public release.
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At some point, a Hall Effect-like observer will spy the quantum state. Any modicum of state-invisibility due to quantum pairing will evaporate, and the billions used to finance this nonsense, with it. Or an inference engine will devolve the pairings or a state engine that can re-pair-at-distance will simply suss the state for "the other side"
Perhaps a 13 year old kid from Alberta will simply find the backdoor to the compute engine bridge on AWS used in the experiments and use it to host his game logic.
This
Re: Prediction: (Score:2)
Nah, it will be much mich simpler.
A random kid, calling on the phone, talking somebody on the inside onto a blunder. The equivale to the $5 wrench.
Or a simple stack overflow or pointer error in the code of some random library in the recipient's network stack turning the fact that third parties can predictably alter the stream into a weapon.
After which the network will start to very reliably transmit the hacker's data in an unhackable way, as he will have fixed the bug. :)
Re: Prediction: (Score:2)
s/onto/into/
Though... Everything can be put "onto", if you're brave enough. ;)
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There is also the tinkering with pairs. If some become randomly unpaired, all bets are off. Winky pairs could be vast amounts of fun. Local magnetic storms, quark bombardments, random flatulence, whatever it takes.
But billions will be burned, great dump trucks of $100 bills, thrown into the quantum pit with glee, all in the name of secrecy, a parallel network, when the aims of Internet II died after billions spent.
Re:Prediction: (Score:4, Insightful)
It all depends on what "is" is, and what "hacked" is. Someone or something normally has to access someone or something. Often the thing that's hacked is not the protocol it sits on, but the process of authentication or authorization.
This is the same as the decentralized ledger arguments. Sure, maybe you can't change the ledger, but if *someone* can (say on their part of the ledger), then *someone else* can pretend to *be that someone*.
I'm skeptical unintended data movement will ever be fully stopped. People can't even use decent passwords.
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Will be "hacked" within 24 hours of its public release.
That's entirely possible, because hacking something only involves breaking the weakest link in the security chain. You can't build an entire solution out of "unhackable" quantum communication channels. There will always be many other links in the chain, including the human users and operators.
Currently, all of the recommended standard encryption and hashing algorithms are still "unhackable" as well. However, when people incorporate them into complete systems, the end results are routinely riddled with vulne
Re:Prediction: (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, good point.
I'm a quantum mechanics fundamentalist and the first step (which the article is WAY ahead of) is to get shit quiet enough to behave.
Go look at the current quantum computers. 99% of the fucking thing is refrigeration.
And, anyhow, they will be operated by people clicking on malicious email attachments or going to trappy web sites or simply accepting payment to be an insider.
The problem with the current Internet can be isolated down to the fucking chair in front of the computer.
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Most hacks today are not from decrypting the current Encryption data stream But from either a flaw in the software, from an action from someone from the inside. That guy who clicked the link!, or the employee who wants their employer to pay for their misdeeds.
There is little real hacking going on from packet sniffing data, then trying to decode it.
1. Modern Switches and router do a much better job than the old hubs, in terms of directing traffic in a closed connection to its end source.
2. Decrypting data is
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If we can do row hammer and bitflip, photons are gonna be a piece of cake.
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Nope. The signals are usually transmitted via photons, along fiber-optic cables. There have *already* been hacks of this approach, exploiting the 'allowable error rate' of the transmission. As long as the sampling of the cable doesn't push the error level over that threshold, signals can be intercepted without the sender & receiver knowing. This kind of gear runs thousands to tens-of-thousands (USD). Well within the means of many hackers.
Encryption is another item entirely.
Re: Prediction: Quantum Apps anyone? (Score:1)
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With Quantum Backdoors (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure.
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Re: Suspicious (Score:2)
I's sad that "your" country is so nationalist, that you feel the need to include that first clause, just to not be hated and harassed.
I guess the harder one fails, the louder one has to believe one succceeds.
Which, funnily enough, then becomes a cause for further failure.
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> I guess the harder one fails, the louder one has to believe one succceeds.
Oh, so you've heard of Trump then?
How to get your Solution(TM) hacked: (Score:2)
1. Claim it is unhackable.
Done.
No more step 2.
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The Next Generation! (Score:3)
After wires, wireless!
After wireless, wirelessless!
Cannot be hacked? (Score:5, Funny)
If they say Quantum communications cannot be hacked, we'll have to take a Leap of faith and believe them.
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Oh boy.
Technological Development plans rejected by FBI (Score:1)
As soon as the FBI got word of a plan for an "unhackable internet," they immediately set their PR firms and governmental lobbying efforts into play. Before the plan ever left the ground, the legislatures were hearing about how many children would be raped if the Quantum Internet were to go into effect.
Technology companies espoused how this will come to be, and the United States should be a leader in new technology. In contrast, the FBI kept foaming at the mouth about how drug dealers would go unpunished an
secure network is no good if (Score:1)
Welfare (Score:2)
Quantum cryptography has been a welfare project with no purpose or added security from the start. Should have stayed a thought experiment.
So you have to man in the middle two channels instead of one ... big woop. Traditional cryptography will remain the corner stone for the security.
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It's not just two channels. It has a secure channel and a public channel.
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So you have to man in the middle two channels instead of one
You can't man in the middle both channels. Because getting in the middle will change the message that the other end receives and the handshake will never complete.
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Your comment exemplifies how little the general technical and IT community understands about quantum cryptography. Okay, the man-in-the-middle attack is solved, just as it is solved in all classical cryptography, by authentication. The present generation of quantum key distribution uses Wegman-Carter authentication for that, which is unconditionally secure. (Now if we ask about the initial authentication before the first quantum-generated key, things get more interesting.)
We can argue about "should have sta
Engangled particles don't transmit data (Score:5, Insightful)
My BS meter is wiggling. I'm thinking that putting "quantum" in front of stuff is going to be the latest ticket for $$$. "We're developing quantum sewage treatment technology". Beautiful. Here's $3 billion to get started.
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It's a form of physical cryptography, offloading the heavy math to laws of physics.
With the little problem that these "laws" of Physics used here are theoretical models. There is absolutely no assurance they will hold up to the degree needed in this application.
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Imagine what could happen if you put blockchain in your quantum?
*boom*
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Re:Engangled particles don't transmit data (Score:4, Insightful)
Err not only can you transmit data via quantum entanglement, it's already been done both in a lab and in a field test. In fact the only counterclaims ever made to quantum entanglement is that it can't be used to transmit data superluminally i.e. faster than the speed of light.
Why did you get modded up, do the Amish get mod points now?
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Engangled particles don't transmit data. My BS meter is wiggling.
I know someone who actually worked on making quantum secure communications a reality. The purpose is to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks and detecting when the fiber optic cable has been tapped. I don't understand the details myself but it's possible tell if photons have been added or removed using entanglement.
It's some crazy quantum stuff but it's absolutely real: https://www.technologyreview.c... [technologyreview.com]
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Re: Engangled particles don't transmit data (Score:2)
Its not about transmission, itâ(TM)s about spy and tamper proofing.
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It is complete BS. You cannot even communicate this way. All you can do is generate a shared key, and if you are very, very careful in the physical implementation (most/all implementation so far have been successfully compromised), a listener cannot know that key. You know, just like Diffie-Hellman already gives you when both parties know the public key of the other party before communicating.
After that key-exchange, you have to go to conventional symmetric encryption anyways or you will get data-rates that
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We're talking Artificially Intelligent, Blockchain, Quantum Communications here. Not only can it not be hacked, It'll create a distributed network with untraceable indestructable messages that will persist for all eternity. Elon Musk will be delivering it to you and I within months (subject to the usual schedule slips).
"hatches" (Score:1)
Maybe in 2020 I'm also growing hypersensitive (apparently all the cool kids are, these days) but "hatches" has a negative connotation. Was that intentional?
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In what way does "hatches" have a negative connotation?
Avian-Americans (birds assigned human at birth) don't like it.
And it will be called... (Score:2)
And it will be called... the Titanic.
Can't hack what doesn't work. (Score:2)
Easier to "Social Engineer" (Score:4, Funny)
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And 30 minutes after its built ... (Score:3)
Strangelove (Score:2)
China, is investing heavily in quantum technology, a field that could transform information processing and confer big economic and national security advantages to countries that dominate it.
So we've had a missile gap, a mineshaft gap and if we've not careful, soon, a quantum gap
Re: Strangelove (Score:2)
I thought thats what they called that soft spot between your legs :-P
Quantum Internet is mostly worthless (Score:3)
"Quantum Internet" is like having an Internet with an OTP pool that never runs dry.
And just as worthless. Symmetric encryption does not scale and crypto compromise is not the source of todays security failures.
Interconnecting quantum computers is of dubious value given there is still no evidence significant exponential scaling is tractable and doubling performance by doubling the number of computers is no different than what exists today.
Solution looking for a Problem (Score:2)
probably the US version of (Score:2)
the Internet is already approaching unhackable (Score:2)
Or at least pointless to hack. Once everyone is unemployed and broke the Internet will fill up with memes and cat pictures. This will become the currency of the future. Hackers will have to demand cat pictures to decrypt your harddrive because nobody will be able to afford bitcoins when they're $500,000 each (hopefully after John McAfee eats his own wiener)
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link (Score:4, Insightful)
Humans are the problem not 'hackability' (Score:2)
Not the same thing (Score:2)
Quantum computers and quantum cryptography have one thing in common - the word quantum.
I hear, if you put a hat on a snowball... (Score:2)
it will last that little bit longer.
Hackers will simply see it as a challenge, and crack it with zero-day results.
'Nuff sed
So we won't be able to use it? (Score:2)
People (Score:1)
"Halting State" (Score:2)
Why am I reminded of "Halting State" by Charles Stross?
I think it's the idea of "bleeding edge" countering "first mover advantage".
Quantum Porn (Score:2)
Yep, its only a matter of time.
Come see the girls of Alpha Centauri VI!!!
Live streaming!! Your tokens get them XXXTra Hott!
Hot girls from Proxima Centauri want to meet you!! See just what they can do with that third lower gangleon!! Youll cum in seconds!
Please remove unhackable from bad headline (Score:2)
Nothing is unhackable. There are always zero days, chances are several people know and haven't said anything. It doesn't matter what the subject is either.
Security can be overwhelmed with a large enough DOS. Security can be underwhelmed by idiots working in a call center who may or may not be taking bribes or being blackmailed. Security can be defeated by the mob rioting, looting or burning about something that happened on the other side of the world that you had nothing to do with.
Security can be obliterat
Venture Capital Bait - nothing to see here (Score:1)
So ... there's already an Internet 2. It's for academia to have a "really fast Internet cause we need it and spam and stuff" except it's obsolete and hardly used and just a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Secondly there's no such thing as quantum networking, but hey let's pretend there is, and information sent from point A to point Z is quantum entangled and unviewable without destroying it, so for practical purposes it's encrypted. The US federal government doesn't want encryption so that's a pretty strong bar
Might be (Score:1)
might might might
He mighta been a contender.
Quantum Apps anyone? (Score:1)