New encryption will bring security to cloud computing
January 22, 2012
It sounds like something out of a spy novel — using the mysterious nature of quantum mechanics to create super-secret information that can’t be decoded by cloud computing systems.
But thanks to the work of a team of international scientists, including the Institute for Quantum Computing’s Anne Broadbent, it’s closer to reality than you think.
The breakthrough, published this week in the journal Science, is a crucial step toward perfectly secure cloud computing, a growing industry providing computer processing and data storage over the internet and other networks…
Scientists like Broadbent are trying to develop quantum computers that would revolutionize information processing, making processors that are infinitely faster than classical computers.
We’re still many years away from a usable quantum computer, but research like that done by Broadbent shows some of the technology’s practical applications. She’s spent the past few years working with scientists in Singapore, Austria and Scotland to develop the technology.
The breakthrough, conducted in a lab in Vienna, used so-called “blind quantum computing” that allows a user to encrypt their data so well that even the computer doesn’t know what it’s processing, she said.
“It’s impossible to break,” Broadbent said. “The cloud receives random stuff, garbage basically, but is able to process it in a way that is meaningful for the user.”
Using the tools of mathematics, the scientists figured out a way to develop a computer code that could encrypt data in particles of light, which can be transmitted over long distances.
It’s so secure that no eavesdropper could understand what they’re looking at, because it would appear completely random.
For any physicist, getting published in the magazine Science is kind of like making it into the pages of Rolling Stone for a musician.
But Broadbent isn’t satisfied yet, knowing her research still has a long way to go.
“It feels good,” she said. “But it just means there’s more work to be done. This is just the first step.”