EncryptionHigh-speed quantum encryption may secure the future internet

Recent advances in quantum computers may soon give hackers access to machines powerful enough to crack even the toughest of standard internet security codes. With these codes broken, all of our online data—from medical records to bank transactions—could be vulnerable to attack.

To fight back against the future threat, researchers are wielding the same strange properties that drive quantum computers to create theoretically hack-proof forms of quantum data encryption.

And now, these quantum encryption techniques may be one step closer to wide-scale use thanks to a new system developed by scientists at Duke University, The Ohio State University, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Their system is capable of creating and distributing encryption codes at megabit-per-second rates, which is five to 10 times faster than existing methods and on par with current internet speeds when running several systems in parallel.

The researchers demonstrate that the technique is secure from common attacks, even in the face of equipment flaws that could open up leaks.

“We are now likely to have a functioning quantum computer that might be able to start breaking the existing cryptographic codes in the near future,” said Daniel Gauthier, a professor of physics at The Ohio State University. “We really need to be thinking hard now of different techniques that we could use for trying to secure the internet.”

The results appear in Science Advances.

To a hacker, our online purchases, bank transactions and medical records all look like gibberish due to ciphers called encryption keys. Personal information sent over the web is first scrambled using one of these keys, and then unscrambled by the receiver using the same key.

For this system to work, both parties must have access to the same key, and it must be kept secret. Quantum key distribution (QKD) takes advantage of one of the fundamental properties of quantum mechanics—measuring tiny bits of matter like electrons or photons automatically changes their properties—to exchange keys in a way that immediately alerts both parties to the existence of a security breach.

Duke notes that though QKD was first theorized in 1984 and implemented shortly thereafter, the technologies to support its wide-scale use are only now coming online. Companies in Europe now sell laser-based systems for QKD, and in a highly-publicized event last summer, China used a satellite to send a quantum key to two land-based stations located 1,200 km apart.