January 2005 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Cpunk Sighting
by Major Variola (ret) 22 Jan '05

22 Jan '05

At 04:12 PM 1/21/05 -0600, J.A. Terranson wrote: >John Young, Cryptome strikes again. NPR is running a story on all of the >"sensitive information" available. Funny shit! LATimes ran something too! And even included a link to the mental-jihadist, terrorist-du-coeur, amateur pan-geo-opticon-astronomer who freely admits having studied what hold buildings (and the thugs that tax them) up, as well as once being an operative of the largest, most WMD'd military ever. Zeus bless his Promethian soul. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-briefs21jan21,1,5352367… January 21, 2005 IN BRIEF / CANADA Many Barred From U.S. Because of Security Lists From Times Wire Reports Dozens of people from Canada have been turned back at the U.S. border or prevented from boarding U.S.-bound planes because their names are on the American "no-fly" list or a State Department list of possible terrorists, documents show. The incidents are detailed in daily briefs from the Homeland Security Department. They contain no classified information. A department spokesman confirmed that the memos, posted at http://cryptome.org , were legitimate.

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FBI objects to air being breathable
by Eugen Leitl 22 Jan '05

22 Jan '05

Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/22/1439222 Posted by: CowboyNeal, on 2005-01-22 16:01:00 from the too-much-freedom dept. An anonymous reader writes "In what seems to be in opposition to the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI is seeking to [1]limit document searches. It seems since now that a lot of documents are in electronic form, searching them is much easier than before, and for that reason the FBI is taking this action." [2]Click Here References 1. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=13&u=/ap/20050121/ap_… _go_ca_st_pe/fbi_openness ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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new egold phisher - this time it's a malware executable
by sunder 22 Jan '05

22 Jan '05

So, the e-gold phishers are at it again... received a very nice email this morning with an attachment. The Received-From header showed this beauty: "from 195.56.214.184 (dwwsaviej(a)cable-214-184.hszob.fibernet.bacs-net.hu [195.56.214.184] (may be forged))" Indeed! Don't know if it's a trojan, spyware, virus, or worm, and I couldn't care less since I don't use egold, but would be interesting (just for curiosity's sake) if someone were to disassemble it to see what it does. It's probably a password grabber of some kind, so falls under spyware, but who knows what other evil payloads were in the attachment. ROTFL! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Text said: Dear E-gold Customer, Herewith we strongly recommend you to install this Service Pack to your PC, as lately we have received a lot of complains regarding unauthorized cash withdrawals from our customers' accounts. This upgrade blocks all currently known Trojan modules and eliminates the possibility of cash withdrawals without your authorization. We highly recommend to install this Service Pack to secure your accounts. Please note, that E-gold doesn't take any responsibility and doesn't accept any claims regarding losses caused by fraudulent actions, if your account has not been duly protected by the present Service Pack. Please find enclosed the archive of the Service Pack installation file in the attachment to this message.

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Tor 0.0.9.3 is out (fwd from arma@mit.edu)
by Eugen Leitl 22 Jan '05

22 Jan '05

----- Forwarded message from Roger Dingledine <arma(a)mit.edu> -----

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Airport Screening Gets Smarter
by R.A. Hettinga 21 Jan '05

21 Jan '05

<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB110617670337330699,00.html> The Wall Street Journal January 20, 2005 Airport Screening Gets Smarter Government Rolls Out Tests Of Systems to Improve Detection of Explosives By KATHRYN KRANHOLD Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL January 20, 2005; Page D1 Prepare to get puffed on. The government is stepping up its investment in technology designed to make screening people and baggage at airports easier and more reliable. General Electric Co. will announce today that the federal Transportation Security Administration has certified its new machines that more precisely detect explosives in checked luggage, reducing false positives and making it possible to do fewer manual searches of bags. The machines, already in place in European cities and Israel, will be tested in U.S. airports this year, according to industry sources. In addition, the TSA, part of the Department of Homeland Security, plans to expand a pilot program using so-called Explosive Trace Portals to scan passengers for explosives. These machines, made by GE and Smith Detections, a unit of London-based Smiths Group PLC, work by blowing puffs of air at passengers, collecting samples of ion-charged air, and instantly analyzing it for explosives, sounding an alarm if any trace is detected. The GE machines are currently in five U.S. airports, including San Diego and Tampa; as many as nine other cities will be added this year, according to the TSA, including Los Angeles, Boston, Miami, Las Vegas and San Francisco. A Smith Detections unit is in New York's Kennedy Airport. Bomb sniffer: GE's 'trace portal,' now in five U.S. airports, tests people for explosives. The technology should go some way toward resolving complaints about the new security procedures in place since 9/11. The TSA has been under fire for the way screeners conduct personal searches, and for mishandling passengers' checked bags during searches. In the latest figures, from November 2004, the TSA received 652 complaints regarding its screening procedures, and an additional 678 complaints about its handling of personal property. That compares with 218 complaints about courtesy and 42 about the processing time. But the technology is advancing faster than the government's ability to deploy it. At current spending levels, says David Plavin, president of Airports Council International-North America, an airport trade group, it will take 15 to 20 years to automate airports' baggage systems with the advanced screening and more-efficient explosives-detection technology. "We're way, way below what large-scale deployment would need," he says. "We're not in the right ballpark." TSA funding for the new technologies has varied from year to year. This year, the TSA has $180 million to purchase explosives-detection systems, up 20% from $150 million in 2004. Additionally, the TSA has announced about $1 billion in grants to pay for airport construction to install screening machines as part of automated baggage systems. GE and analysts who follow the company believe that the market for security technology will continue to grow in the U.S. and overseas as ports and other transportation systems look for ways to screen for explosives. A TSA spokeswoman said the administration is "committed to aggressively deploying the newest technology available" within the authorized budget. Explosives screening has also moved to cruise ships and commercial air cargo. Recently, Miami's airport officials placed one of its explosives-detection screeners at its port area to screen luggage for passengers boarding cruise ships. The TSA also has a small program screening commercial air cargo at a handful of airports in cities including Miami and Dallas. The machines are made by GE and L-3 Communications, a New York City-based manufacturer of security technology, also approved by the TSA. There is competition to produce lower-cost machines. The TSA recently certified another manufacturer, Reveal Imaging Technologies, based in Bedford, Mass., which has developed baggage screening machines that are smaller and less expensive than those made by GE or L-3. GE's newest machines scan bags that have been flagged, checking the molecular makeup of a suspect item. Reveal's machines cost about $500,000 apiece, compared with more than $1 million for GE's and L-3's. But these machines may be viable only in smaller airports. After the Sept. 11 attacks, as part of a federal mandate, the country's 450 airports installed explosive-trace detection machines or explosive-detection machines based on advanced medical computed tomography, or CT technology. The explosive-detection machines, made by GE and L-3, detect items of a certain density that could be an explosive. The machine isn't foolproof; a chunk of cheese or a fruitcake, for example, can falsely trigger an alarm. Once a bag is tagged as having a possible bomb inside, airport security employees further evaluate the bag through an onscreen view and then often a search. GE's newest technology, called Yxlon XES 3000, works in concert with the CT-based explosive-detection machines. Once a bag has been flagged, it is sent through the second machine, which determines the molecular makeup of the suspect item. GE says the secondary screening reduces to a minimum the percentage of false positives -- and the need for time-consuming hand searches. The trace portals that screen individual passengers cost from $130,000 to $150,000 apiece. They are used in addition to metal detectors, but on a random basis, not with every passenger. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Cpunk Sighting
by J.A. Terranson 21 Jan '05

21 Jan '05

John Young, Cryptome strikes again. NPR is running a story on all of the "sensitive information" available. Funny shit! -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin(a)mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF Civilization is in a tailspin - everything is backwards, everything is upside down- doctors destroy health, psychiatrists destroy minds, lawyers destroy justice, the major media destroy information, governments destroy freedom and religions destroy spirituality - yet it is claimed to be healthy, just, informed, free and spiritual. We live in a social system whose community, wealth, love and life is derived from alienation, poverty, self-hate and medical murder - yet we tell ourselves that it is biologically and ecologically sustainable. The Bush plan to screen whole US population for mental illness clearly indicates that mental illness starts at the top. Rev Dr Michael Ellner

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crypto, science, and popular writing
by Major Variola (ret) 21 Jan '05

21 Jan '05

At 03:23 PM 1/20/05 +0000, Justin wrote: >How could they possibly get clue? Scientists don't want to write >pop-sci articles for a living. It's impossible to condense most current >research down to digestible kernels that the masses can understand. >SciAm should close down, requiring those who care about science to learn >enough about it to read science journals. That is untrue. In fact, RSA was introduced to the wider audience via Sci Am IIRC. >Professors who can teach a QM course well in a semester are rare enough. >I doubt any one of them could write a 5000 word article on quantum >entanglement that would be intelligible to the average cretinous >American who wants to seem smart by reading Sci-Am. If they want to be >smart, they can start by picking up an undergrad-level book on QM. But >that requires much effort to read, unlike a glossy 5000 word article. I disagree. I think some here --even you-- could write such an article. Simply state entanglement as a given, much like gravity or maxwell's electromagnetics, and then explain how its useful. *Why* and *how* the "givens" are correct is not necessary, perhaps not even known. (After all, all physics does bottom out with phenomenology). The same is true for explaining symmetric crypto, hasing, or PK ---just assume a "hard" function, or a "one way trap door function", ignoring avalanche or the number theory behind it, and go to applications immediately. That Sci Am has gotten lefty and soft is regrettable, but don't think this means that crypto and QM apps can't be explained to your grandmother.

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happy newyear's eve
by A.Melon 21 Jan '05

21 Jan '05

Angleton, James Hugh ssdi 215-50-2639 1888-12-05 1973-04 NCR businessman, former Col., wife Carmen Mercedes Moreno, Boise, ID Angleton, James Jesus unres 1917-12-09 1987-05-11 CIA/OSS, possibly b. 1918- Col. James Hugh Angleton, Carmen Mercedes Moreno, Boise, ID Asimov, Isaac ssdi 055-24-6410 1920-01-02 1992-04-06 author, source of the laws of robotics Bissell, Richard Mervin ssdi 129-10-9645 1909-10-18 1994-02-15 CIA Boggs, Thomas Hale, Sr. missing 433-01-1763 1914-02-15 1972-10-16 congressperson Bulger, James Joseph "Whitey" missing a.k.a. Thomas Baxter; mob, Winter Hill Gang Casey, William James ssdi 130-12-7576 1913-03-13 1987-05-06 CIA Colby, William Egan ssdi 577-28-7679 1920-01-04 1996-04-27 CIA Connally, John Bowden ssdi 466-03-9768 1917-02-27 1993-06-15 TX Governor; hit during JFK assassination Cooper, John Sherman ssdi 361-09-8366 1901-08-23 1991-02-21 senator; warren commission Crick, Francis Harry Compton unres 1916-06-08 2004-07-28 co-discoverer of DNA Cunanan, Andrew Phillip unres 1969-08-31 1997-07-23 murdered Gianni Versace Deming, William Edwards ssdi 085-26-4468 1900-10-14 1993-12-20 production/management expert Dick, Philip Kindred ssdi 550-38-3080 1928-12-16 1982-03-02 writer, sci-fi Dijkstra, Edsger Wybe ssdi 459-67-5076 1930-05-11 2002-08-06 computer scientist Dirac, Paul Adrien Maurice ssdi 153-36-3061 1902-08-08 1984-10-20 founder of quantum mechanics Disney, Walter "Walt" ssdi 562-10-0296 1901-12-05 1966-12-15 inventor Donovan, William Joseph pre-ss 1883-01-01 1959-02-08 lawyer, OSS Dulles, Allen Welsh ssdi 086-28-2350 1893-04-07 1969-01-29 CIA; warren commission Eisenhower, Dwight David "Ike" ssdi 572-64-0315 1890-10-14 1969-03-28 president Feynman, Richard Phillips ssdi 098-03-1009 1918-05-11 1988-02-15 physicist Forrestal, James Vincent pre-ss 1892-02-15 1949-05-22 first Secretary of Defense, suicide Foster, Vincent Walker, Jr. ssdi 429-80-1132 1945-01-15 1993-07-20 lawyer Geisel, Theodor Seuss ssdi 552-38-5014 1904-03-02 1991-09-24 Dr. Seuss Genovese, Catherine "Kitty" unres 1935 1964-03-13 murder victim Giancana, Sam "Momo" ssdi 326-18-6902 1908-05-24 1975-06-19 mafia, possible CIA assassination (ssdi: b. 06-15) Harris, Eric ssdi 284-82-1478 1981-04-09 1999-04-20 Columbine Helms, Richard McGarrah ssdi 317-01-6292 1913-03-30 2002-10-23 CIA Herbert, Frank Patrick ssdi 549-26-9691 1920-10-08 1986-02-11 writer, sci-fi Hiss, Alger ssdi 087-32-7727 1904-11-11 1996-11-15 KGB spy Hoffa, James Riddle "Jimmy" missing 1913-02-14 1975-07-30 mafia Hoffman, Abbott "Abbie" ssdi 030-28-6194 1936-11-30 1989-04-15 radical Hoover, John Edgar ssdi 577-60-1114 1895-01-01 1972-05-15 FBI Johnson, Lyndon Baines ssdi 577-60-6128 1908-08-27 1973-01-22 president Jones, James Warren "Jim" ssdi 303-32-5942 1931-05-13 1978-11-18 cultist Katzenbach, Nicholas ssdi 335-03-1844 1901-02-26 1972-12 attorney general Kennedy, Robert Francis "Bobby" ssdi 026-24-0879 1925-11-20 1968-06-06 U.S. Attorney General King, Martin Luther, Jr. ssdi 253-36-3980 1929-01-15 1968-04-04 revolutionary Klebold, Dylan ssdi 524-45-5481 1981-09-11 1999-04-20 Columbine Korzybski, Alfred Habdank Skarbek pre-ss 1879-07-03 1950-03-01 founder of General Semantics Lansky, Meyer ssdi 109-03-8534 1902-07-04 1983-01-15 mafia Leary, Timothy Francis ssdi 032-07-5410 1920-10-22 1996-05-31 LSD Lee, Brandon unres 1965-02-01 1993-03-31 The Crow Lee, Bruce ssdi 564-58-5856 1940-11-27 1973-07-20 martial artist (ssdi: b. 11-24) McCloy, John Jay ssdi 578-32-5244 1895-03-31 1989-03-11 World Bank president; warren commission McCone, John Alex ssdi 562-09-7959 1902-01-04 1991-02-14 CIA McVeigh, Timothy James ssdi 129-58-4709 1968-04-23 2001-06-11 executed for the OKC bombing Miler, Newton B. ssdi 481-03-5505 1900-10-28 1992-01-25 CIA, in the CIA SIG Mortensen, Norma Jeane pre-ss 1926-06-01 1962-08-05 Marilyn Monroe; playboy, suicide Nixon, Richard Milhous ssdi 567-68-0515 1913-01-09 1994-04-22 president Offie, Carmel ssdi 578-44-7515 1909-09-22 1972-06 CIA, don juan Orlov, Igor "Sasha" ssdi 578-54-4451 1922-01-01 1982-05 CIA, KGB mole; aka Alexander Koptatzky Oswald, Lee Harvey unres 433-54-3937 1939-10-18 1963-11-24 alleged JFK assassin Pauling, Linus Carl ssdi 545-44-4297 1901-02-28 1994-08-19 chemist Pearl, Daniel ssdi 547-35-3986 1963-10-10 2002-01-31 journalist Elvis Presley ssdi 409-52-2002 1935-01-08 1977-08-16 singer Rand, Ayn ssdi 571-32-9405 1905-02-02 1982-03-06 writer; born Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum Ray, James Earl ssdi 728-09-4027 1928-03-10 1998-04-23 assassin (MLK) Reagan, Ronald Wilson unres 1911-02-06 2004-06-05 U.S. president Richardson, Elliot Lee ssdi 028-18-8016 1920-07-20 1999-12-31 lawyer, politician, Nixon-related (ssdi: d. 12-15) Rocca, Raymond G. ssdi 227-60-1579 1917-02-22 1993-11-11 CIA/OSS, Angleton Rocca, George Raymond ssdi 378-92-8331 1925-01-27 2000-09-21 CIA/OSS, alternate possibility Rockefeller, Nelson ssdi 056-09-0954 1908-07-08 1979-01-26 vice president 41, NY governor Ruby, Jack Leon unres 359-10-5891 1911 1967-01-03 JFK-related, killed LHO; b. Jacob Leon Rubenstein Russell, Richard, Jr. ssdi 256-70-0796 1897-11-02 1971-01-21 senator; warren commission Ryan, Thelma "Patricia" Catherine ssdi 568-09-8510 1912-03-16 1993-06 first lady (Nixon) Sagan, Carl Edward ssdi 338-30-6096 1934-11-09 1996-12-20 astronomer Salk, Jonas ssdi 578-38-3944 1914-10-28 1995-06-23 biologist Shannon, Claude Elwood ssdi 096-16-3629 1916-04-30 2001-02-24 mathematician Simpson, Nicole Brown ssdi 573-72-9948 1959-05-19 1994-06-13 ex-wife of O.J. Simpson Spann, Johnny Micheal ssdi 416-21-6382 1969-03-01 2001-11-25 CIA Teller, Edward ssdi 348-28-0765 1908-01-15 2003-09-09 physicist Thurmond, James Strom ssdi 250-64-5145 1902-12-05 2003-06-26 senator Tolson, Clyde Anderson ssdi 577-60-2204 1900-05-22 1975-04-15 FBI assoc. director under Hoover Tordella, Louis William ssdi 579-44-0892 1911-05-01 1996-01-10 NSA Trafficante, Santo, Jr. ssdi 265-50-2785 1914-11-15 1987-03-17 mob Truman, Harry ssdi 488-40-6969 1884-05-08 1972-12-26 president Warren, Earl ssdi 563-66-5198 1891-03-19 1974-07-09 supreme court justice; warren commission White, Harry Dexter pre-ss 1892-10 1948-08-16 worldbank, IMF, communist spy, SecTreas Whitman, Charles Joseph unres 1941-06-23 1966-08-01 murderer Zelazny, Roger Joseph ssdi 289-32-9071 1937-05-13 1995-06-14 sci-fi writer Zorn, Max August ssdi 307-40-0356 1906-06-06 1993-03-09 mathematician

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Scientific American on Quantum Encryption
by Eugen Leitl 20 Jan '05

20 Jan '05

Scientific American has little clue, as usual (see their nanotechnology retraction). Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/20/0358215 Posted by: samzenpus, on 2005-01-20 06:35:00 from the just-try-and-break-it dept. [1]prostoalex writes "Scientific American claims that [2]advances in commercially available quantum encryption might obsolete the existing factorization-based solutions: "The National Security Agency or one of the Federal Reserve banks can now buy a quantum-cryptographic system from two small companies - and more products are on the way. This new method of encryption represents the first major commercial implementation for what has become known as quantum information science, which blends quantum mechanics and information theory. The ultimate technology to emerge from the field may be a quantum computer so powerful that the only way to protect against its prodigious code-breaking capability may be to deploy quantum-cryptographic techniques."" IFRAME: [3]pos6 References 1. http://www.everythingfirebird.com/ 2. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=000479CD-F58C-11BE-… 0683414B7F0000&ref=rdf ----- End forwarded message ----- December 20, 2004 Best-Kept Secrets Quantum cryptography has marched from theory to laboratory to real products By Gary Stix At the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Laboratory, Charles Bennett is known as a brilliant theoretician--one of the fathers of the emerging field of quantum computing. Like many theorists, he has not logged much experience in the laboratory. His absentmindedness in relation to the physical world once transformed the color of a teapot from green to red when he left it on a double boiler too long. But in 1989 Bennett and colleagues John A. Smolin and Gilles Brassard cast caution aside and undertook a groundbreaking experiment that would demonstrate a new cryptography based on the principles of quantum mechanics. The team put together an experiment in which photons moved down a 30-centimeter channel in a light-tight box called "Aunt Martha's coffin." The direction in which the photons oscillated, their polarization, represented the 0s or 1s of a series of quantum bits, or qubits. The qubits constituted a cryptographic "key" that could be used to encrypt or decipher a message. What kept the key from prying eavesdroppers was Heisenberg's uncertainty principle--a foundation of quantum physics that dictates that the measurement of one property in a quantum state will perturb another. In a quantum cryptographic system, any interloper tapping into the stream of photons will alter them in a way that is detectable to the sender and the receiver. In principle, the technique provides the makings of an unbreakable cryptographic key. Today quantum cryptography has come a long way from the jury-rigged project assembled on a table in Bennett's office. The National Security Agency or one of the Federal Reserve banks can now buy a quantum-cryptographic system from two small companies--and more products are on the way. This new method of encryption represents the first major commercial implementation for what has become known as quantum information science, which blends quantum mechanics and information theory. The ultimate technology to emerge from the field may be a quantum computer so powerful that the only way to protect against its prodigious code-breaking capability may be to deploy quantum-cryptographic techniques. The arrival of the quantum computer may portend the eventual demise of ciphers based on factorization. The challenge modern cryptographers face is for sender and receiver to share a key while ensuring that no one has filched a copy. A method called public-key cryptography is often used to distribute the secret keys for encryption and decoding of a full-length message. The security of public-key cryptography depends on factorization or other difficult mathematical problems. It is easy to compute the product of two large numbers but extremely hard to factor it back into the primes. The popular RSA cipher algorithm, widely deployed in public-key cryptography, relies on factorization. The secret key being transferred between sender and receiver is encrypted with a publicly available key, say, a large number such as 408,508,091 (in practice, the number would be much larger). It can be decrypted only with a private key owned by the recipient of the data, made up of two factors, in this case 18,313 and 22,307. The difficulty of overcoming a public-key cipher may hold secret keys secure for a decade or more. But the advent of the quantum information era--and, in particular, the capability of quantum computers to rapidly perform monstrously challenging factorizations--may portend the eventual demise of RSA and other cryptographic schemes. "If quantum computers become a reality, the whole game changes," says John Rarity, a professor in the department of electrical and electronics engineering at the University of Bristol in England. Unlike public-key cryptography, quantum cryptography should remain secure when quantum computers arrive on the scene. One way of sending a quantum-cryptographic key between sender and receiver requires that a laser transmit single photons that are polarized in one of two modes. In the first, photons are positioned vertically or horizontally (rectilinear mode); in the second, they are oriented 45 degrees to the left or right of vertical (diagonal mode). In either mode, the opposing positions of the photons represent either a digital 0 or a 1. The sender, whom cryptographers by convention call Alice, sends a string of bits, choosing randomly to send photons in either the rectilinear or the diagonal modes. The receiver, known as Bob in crypto-speak, makes a similarly random decision about which mode to measure the incoming bits. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle dictates that he can measure the bits in only one mode, not both. Only the bits that Bob measured in the same mode as sent by Alice are guaranteed to be in the correct orientation, thus retaining the proper value. After transmission, Bob then communicates with Alice, an exchange that need not remain secret, to tell her which of the two modes he used to receive each photon. He does not, however, reveal the 0- or 1-bit value represented by each photon. Alice then tells Bob which of the modes were measured correctly. They both ignore photons that were not observed in the right mode. The modes measured correctly constitute the key that serves as an input for an algorithm used to encrypt or decipher a message. If someone tries to intercept this stream of photons--call her Eve--she cannot measure both modes, thanks to Heisenberg. If she makes the measurements in the wrong mode, even if she resends the bits to Bob in the same way she measured them, she will inevitably introduce errors. Alice and Bob can detect the presence of the eavesdropper by comparing selected bits and checking for errors. Beginning in 2003, two companies--id Quantique in Geneva and MagiQ Technologies in New York City--introduced commercial products that send a quantum-cryptographic key beyond the 30 centimeters traversed in Bennett's experiment. And, after demonstrating a record transmission distance of 150 kilometers, NEC is to come to market with a product at the earliest next year. Others, such as IBM, Fujitsu and Toshiba, have active research efforts. The products on the market can send keys over individual optical-fiber links for multiple tens of kilometers. A system from MagiQ costs $70,000 to $100,000. "A small number of customers are using and testing the system, but it's not widely deployed in any network," comments Robert Gelfond, a former Wall Street quantitative trader who in 1999 founded MagiQ Technologies. Some government agencies and financial institutions are afraid that an encrypted message could be captured today and stored for a decade or more--at which time a quantum computer might decipher it. Richard J. Hughes, a researcher in quantum cryptography at Los Alamos National Laboratory, cites other examples of information that must remain confidential for a long time: raw census data, the formula for Coca-Cola or the commands for a commercial satellite. (Remember Captain Midnight, who took over HBO for more than four minutes in 1986.) Among the prospective customers for quantum-cryptographic systems are telecommunications providers that foresee offering customers an ultrasecure service. The first attempts to incorporate quantum cryptography into actual networks--rather than just point-to-point connections--have begun. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has funded a project to connect six network nodes that stretch among Harvard University, Boston University and BBN Technologies in Cambridge, Mass., a company that played a critical role in establishing the Internet. The encryption keys are sent over dedicated links, and the messages ciphered with those keys are transmitted over the Internet. "This is the first continuously running operational quantum-cryptography network outside a laboratory," notes Chip Elliott of BBN, who heads the project. The network, designed to merely show that the technology works, transfers ordinary unclassified Internet traffic. "The only secrets I can possibly think of here are where the parking spaces are," Elliott says. Last fall, id Quantique and a partner, the Geneva-based Internet services provider Deckpoint, put on display a network that allowed a cluster of servers in Geneva to have its data backed up at a site 10 kilometers away, with new keys being distributed frequently through a quantum-encrypted link. The current uses for quantum cryptography are in networks of limited geographic reach. The strength of the technique--that anyone who spies on a key transmittal will change it unalterably--also means that the signals that carry quantum keys cannot be amplified by network equipment that restores a weakening signal and allows it to be relayed along to the next repeater. An optical amplifier would corrupt qubits. To extend the distance of these links, researchers are looking beyond optical fibers as the medium to distribute quantum keys. Scientists have trekked to mountaintops--where the altitude minimizes atmospheric turbulence--to prove the feasibility of sending quantum keys through the air. One experiment in 2002 at Los Alamos National Laboratory created a 10-kilometer link. Another, performed that same year by QinetiQ, based in Farnborough, England, and Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, stretched 23 kilometers between two mountaintops in the southern Alps. By optimizing this technology--using bigger telescopes for detection, better filters and antireflective coatings--it might be possible to build a system that could transmit and receive signals over more than 1,000 kilometers, sufficient to reach satellites in low earth orbit. A network of satellites would allow for worldwide coverage. The European Space Agency is in the early stages of putting together a plan for an earth-to-satellite experiment. (The European Union also launched an effort in April to develop quantum encryption over communications networks, an effort spurred in part by a desire to prevent eavesdropping by Echelon, a system that intercepts electronic messages for the intelligence services of the U.S., Britain and other nations.) Ultimately cryptographers want some form of quantum repeater--in essence, an elementary form of quantum computer that would overcome distance limitations. A repeater would work through what Albert Einstein famously called "spukhafte Fernwirkungen," spooky action at a distance. Anton Zeilinger and his colleagues at the Institute of Experimental Physics in Vienna, Austria, took an early step toward a repeater when they reported in the August 19, 2004, issue of Nature that their group had strung an optical-fiber cable in a sewer tunnel under the Danube River and stationed an "entangled" photon at each end. The measurement of the state of polarization in one photon (horizontal, vertical, and so on) establishes immediately an identical polarization that can be measured in the other. Entanglement spooked Einstein, but Zeilinger and his team took advantage of a link between two entangled photons to "teleport" the information carried by a third photon a distance of 600 meters across the Danube. Such a system might be extended in multiple relays, so that the qubits in a key could be transmitted across continents or oceans. To make this a reality will require development of esoteric components, such as a quantum memory capable of actually storing qubits without corrupting them before they are sent along to a subsequent link. "This is still very much in its infancy. It's still in the hands of physics laboratories," notes Nicolas Gisin, a professor at the University of Geneva, who helped to found id Quantique and who has also done experiments on long-distance entanglement. A quantum memory might be best implemented with atoms, not photons. An experiment published in the October 22 issue of Science showed how this might work. Building on ideas of researchers from the University of Innsbruck in Austria, a group at the Georgia Institute of Technology detailed in the paper how two clouds of ultracold rubidium atoms could be entangled and, because of the quantum linkage, could be inscribed with a qubit, the clouds storing the qubit for much longer than a photon can. The experiment then transferred the quantum state of the atoms, their qubit, onto a photon, constituting information transfer from matter to light and showing how a quantum memory might output a bit. By entangling clouds, Alex Kuzmich and Dzmitry Matsukevich of Georgia Tech hope to create repeaters that can transfer qubits over long distances. Entanglement spooked Einstein, but researchers have used the phenomenon to "teleport" quantum information. The supposed inviolability of quantum cryptography rests on a set of assumptions that do not necessarily carry over into the real world. One of those assumptions is that only a single photon represents each qubit. Quantum cryptography works by taking a pulsed laser and diminishing its intensity to such an extent that typically it becomes unlikely that any more than one in 10 pulses contains a photon--the rest are dark--one reason that the data transfer rate is so low. But this is only a statistical likelihood. The pulse may have more than one photon. An eavesdropper could, in theory, steal an extra photon and use it to help decode a message. A software algorithm, known as privacy amplification, helps to guard against this possibility by masking the values of the qubits. But cryptographers would like to have better photon sources and detectors. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is one of many groups laboring on these devices. "One very interesting area is the development of detectors that can tell the difference between one, two or more photons arriving at the same time," says Alan Migdall of NIST. Researchers there have also tried to address the problem of slow transmission speed by generating quantum keys at a rate of one megabit per second--100 times faster than any previous efforts and enough to distribute keys for video applications. Quantum cryptography may still prove vulnerable to some unorthodox attacks. An eavesdropper might sabotage a receiver's detector, causing qubits received from a sender to leak back into a fiber and be intercepted. And an inside job will always prove unstoppable. "Treachery is the primary way," observes Seth Lloyd, an expert in quantum computation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "There's nothing quantum mechanics can do about that." Still, in the emerging quantum information age, these new ways of keeping secrets may be better than any others in the codebooks. -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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RE: Scientific American on Quantum Encryption
by Trei, Peter 20 Jan '05

20 Jan '05

Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 10:47:38AM -0500, Trei, Peter wrote: > > > I've actually seen these devices in operation. The thing > > that impressed me most was that the path need not be a > > single fiber from end to end - you can maintain quantum > > state across a switchable fiber junction. This means > > Very impressive. If they manage to keep the entanglement all > the way up to > LEO by line of sight it would be even more impressive > (anyone thinks this can be done at all?) > > > you are no longer limited to a single pair of boxes talking to > > each other. At the moment, the practical limit in fiber is around 150 km Getting to LEO is a *lot* harder - remember, you're throwing and catching one photon at a time - a beam that spreads wider than your detector is usually going to miss the detector. Peter Trei

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