Cybersegurity

What is quantum cryptography?

Every time you access your bank account online, send an email or make an online subscription, the information and data provided can be vulnerable to cyber-attacks.

Whether it's personal data, sensitive government documents or corporate secrets, everything is susceptible, which is why cybersecurity systems use RSA asymmetric systems, based on particularly long two prime number keys, to protect them.

As computers evolve and new technologies such as quantum computers appear, they seem to be able to solve the keys, which can violate RSA systems.

To avoid further vulnerabilities in the net, researchers are working on an alternative that could solve this problem, based on quantum physics.

Called Quantum Key Distribution or QKD, it is a method of distributing cryptographic keys protected by the principles of quantum mechanics. These principles determine the polarization of photons, the smallest unit of energy in a light wave, which is indivisible and has the quantum quality of vibrating in two perpendicular directions simultaneously.

It is known that even without the alteration that a hacker can create, a photon can be altered, in the optical fiber, by an atom of the fiber or external radiation, being able to be considered a hack. To prevent these actions that could be considered an attempted breach, this novel security system has a self-correcting algorithm, like those used in traditional communication systems.

This process between the receiver and the sender is repeated every few seconds, generating new encryption keys and significantly reducing the chances of a hack.

The results of this research were published in Science magazine and to date, it is the fastest system, capable of generating 250 million random bits per second or 254 independent pixels, an enormous advance compared to previous devices that only registered one pixel at a time, as Krister Shalm, physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology of the United States, said "It represents a great leap in the performance of random number generators".

Technology still needs to advance to keep up with this new security system, but it will undoubtedly be a great ally in safeguarding valuable data.

18 de Mayo, 2021