[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
[further parts of this post were recovered on 13 October 2018]
Now here’s an interesting article [security.itworld.com]. It seems that the European Union is investing €11 million over four years into developing a secure communication system based on quantum cryptography.
For those of you not in the know, quantum cryptography (for passing crypto keys) works like this:
Quantum Cryptography For Dummies
- Alice wants to send Bob secret message, confessing her undying love, but doesn’t want anybody else to know how she feels.
- She fires some photons out of a special tube, so that some of them spin in different directions.
- Numbers are assigned to the different directions of spin, and she multiplies these together – along with a few prime numbers, for good measure – to get a Really Big Number.
- Then, Alice does some clever sums on the letters in her love letter, using the Really Big Number.
- Alice posts the first line of the new love letter to Bob (the line that says “Dear Bob,”). This is known as the ‘message header’. If Bob sends a message back saying that he got this, Alice will send the rest of…