Simon Says – Musings of a Technology CTO

BBC News recently reported that the world’s first robust network based on Quantum cryptography hasgone live in Vienna. Comprising 7 locations and 200km of optical fiber, and hosted by Siemens, the network has the capability to re-route connections in the event of link failure, and handle eavesdropping attacks.

Though it sounds a little Star Trek, Quantum Crypto has been around for over 20 years already – IBM patented the classic Quantum key exchange algorithm in 1984. It’s a novel concept because the key exchange algorithm (BB84) is provably secure – i.e., there’s no hack or attack for it unless our understanding of the nature of the Universe is fundamentally wrong. Read more…