A New Unbreakable Code System

[Mr. Anderson]

I just mentioned the reading the photon without effecting it more as something that could happen if someone figures out how, not based on current technology or current theories.

The one thing that seems to happen to stories like these is that someone comes along eventually that *solves* the problem. It will actually be more of an issue if we see this 1 photon beam actually being used outside of a lab.

D

 

[jsw]

Of course, no matter what the encryption, paying someone a year's salary will likely get you the info.

 

[savar]

I wonder what they would have found if they'd added a bag of microwave popcorn to the mix.

Not many people make me laugh on MR, but you just cracked me up. I'm glad you like VB, too. One of my friends interned at Adult Swim for a few summers, so I got to watch the VB pilots before they even signed them.

 

[savar]

It's IMPOSSIBLE to do, unless Heisenberg was wrong.

Can somebody explain to me why you still couldn't do "man in the middle"? Just with the same receiving and transmitting equipment that they are using, read the signal in and save it for your own purposes, then transmit the same signal out on the other end.

 

[clayj]

Can somebody explain to me why you still couldn't do "man in the middle"? Just with the same receiving and transmitting equipment that they are using, read the signal in and save it for your own purposes, then transmit the same signal out on the other end.

EDIT: OK, better explanation... say I have a system like this set up, and I am sending you a message. The system is designed to send one photon every X seconds (where X is some small extremely small time interval, like a billionth of a second). So here I am, sending photons... ping, ping, ping, ping... and you're receiving them.

If someone intercepts my photons, the timing will be off because the speed of light is constant and because of the time necessary to intercept the signal and resend a new photon in your direction... so instead of ping, ping, ping, ping, you'd get ping, ping... pause... ping, ping. The time gap would be the dead giveaway that the signal had been intercepted.

 

[jared_kipe]

EDIT: OK, better explanation... say I have a system like this set up, and I am sending you a message. The system is designed to send one photon every X seconds (where X is some small extremely small time interval, like a billionth of a second). So here I am, sending photons... ping, ping, ping, ping... and you're receiving them.

If someone intercepts my photons, the timing will be off because the speed of light is constant and because of the time necessary to intercept the signal and resend a new photon in your direction... so instead of ping, ping, ping, ping, you'd get ping, ping... pause... ping, ping. The time gap would be the dead giveaway that the signal had been intercepted.

Even easier, when you go to read a photon you have to guess as to what polarization axis the transmitted signals are in. If you guess wrong, then you don't get the right message. The people on the end us SOME of the data to publicly confer that they got the right axis guess. A man in the middle would fudge this up. MiM would have to make a guess, but then all he could do is send what HE got back out, it would be very easy to get, not only the time delay, but when the actual recievers decied to "compare notes" they would have to find differences and throw out it all away. Remember that both the message, and the decryption code are never sent through the same means. Whatever the MiM got, he can't use anymore.