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China’s quantum satellite enables first totally secure long-range messages

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bigheadfred:
In the middle of the night, invisible to anyone but special telescopes in two Chinese observatories, satellite Micius sends particles of light to Earth to establish the world’s most secure communication link. Named after the ancient Chinese philosopher also known as Mozi, Micius is the world’s first quantum communications satellite and has, for several years, been at the forefront of quantum encryption. Scientists have now reported using this technology to reach a major milestone: long-range secure communication you could trust even without trusting the satellite it runs through.

https://theconversation.com/chinas-quantum-satellite-enables-first-totally-secure-long-range-messages-140803

bigheadfred:
@Slide Rule

bigheadfred:
This article is a month old. There may be other newer items at this url. Or anywhere in the interwebs.

Between AI and quantum computing, any kind of privacy you think you have, in the cyber world, will be gone.

Elderberry:
China Reaches New Milestone in Space-Based Quantum Communications

Scientific American by  Karen Kwon on June 25, 2020

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/china-reaches-new-milestone-in-space-based-quantum-communications/


--- Quote ---The nation’s Micius satellite successfully established an ultrasecure link between two ground stations separated by more than 1,000 kilometers

The launch of the Chinese satellite Micius in 2016 could have been viewed as merely a single addition to the 2,700-odd instruments already orbiting Earth. But Micius, which is solely dedicated to quantum information science, arguably represents the nation’s lead in an emerging contest among great powers at the frontiers of physics. The brainchild of physicist Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China, the satellite has helped him and his colleagues achieve several groundbreaking results that are bringing the once esoteric field of quantum cryptography into the mainstream. Pan’s team presented a secure method of quantum messaging using Micius in a new paper, published on June 15 in Nature. The achievement brings the world—or China, at least—one step closer to realizing truly unhackable global communications.

In 2017 the team, along with a group of researchers in Austria, was able to employ the satellite to perform the world’s first quantum-encrypted virtual teleconference between Beijing and Vienna. Despite being a huge milestone, this method was not bulletproof against hacking. Micius itself was the weak point: The satellite “knew” the sequences of photons, or keys, for each location, as well as a combined key for decryption. If, somehow, a spy had carefully eavesdropped on its activity, the integrity of the teleconference could have been compromised.

To overcome this problem, the new demonstration by Pan and his colleagues ensured that Micius would not “know” anything. The trick was to avoid using the satellite as a communications relay. Instead the team relied on it solely for simultaneously transmitting a pair of secret keys to allow two ground stations in China, located more than 1,120 kilometers apart, to establish a direct link. “We don’t need to trust the satellite,” Pan says. “So the satellite can be made by anyone—even by your enemy.” Each secret key is one of two strings of entangled photon pairs. The laws of quantum physics dictate that any attempt to spy on such a transmission will unavoidably leave an errorlike footprint that can be easily detected by recipients at either station.

More at link.
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bigheadfred:
Thanks, @Elderberry

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