Breakthrough made in satellite encryption

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

Forwarded from: William Knowles <wk () c4i org>

http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/559741p-4408024c.html

By JIM KRANE, AP Technology Writer 
 
NEW YORK (October 2, 2002 6:10 p.m. EDT) - Satellites are increasingly
relied upon for military and intelligence use but securely
transmitting voice, image and other communications remains
troublesome.

In June, for instance, European satellite TV viewers could watch
surveillance video of American military bases in Bosnia that was being
broadcast in an unencrypted stream, via satellite.

Now, British military researchers have improved an emerging method of
secure transmission for the encryption keys used to unscramble such
data.

In a demonstration reported in this week's issue of the journal
Nature, the researchers say they successfully exchanged encryption
keys transmitted on a beam of invisible light.

The researchers completed the exchange from the summits of
mountaintops in southern Germany that are 14 miles apart.

Within seven years, the technique ought to be able to transmit
encryption keys to any receiving point on the planet, via low-orbiting
satellite, said John Rarity, a scientist with QinetiQ, the commercial
arm of Britain's defense research lab.

Current encryption technology uses mathematical "keys" that are
exchanged between trusting users. The keys are used to unscramble
messages, video and other data.

Such keys, made of random strings of digits, can be intercepted on
conventional networks. So they are routinely sent by less efficient
means.

"At the moment, highly secure encryption keys are typically sent by a
man on a motorbike or a guy with a diplomatic bag," Rarity said.

Rarity and other researchers believe keys can be more reliably
exchanged using methods of physics, rather than mathematics.

QinetiQ's experiment involved attaching the key's digits to individual
light particles, or photons, which are sent as a weak beam of light.

The practice is believed to be safe because intercepting and reading
the key noticeably alters the state of the photons, tipping off the
intended recipient that the key has been compromised.

QinetiQ isn't the only group researching the concept.

Rarity said his team and a similar outfit at the U.S. Department of
Energy's lab at Los Alamos, N.M., have been leapfrogging each other in
the distances they've been able to send and receive their encryption
key-toting light beams. Fourteen miles is the longest-yet
transmission, he said.

Only the keys used to unscramble the data must be sent via the light
beams. The actual data could be sent in scrambled form via satellite
or any sort of conveyance, Rarity said.

"Once you've got your key, you can use your mobile phone or any other
method," he said.

In order to send light streams to low-orbiting satellites, Rarity said
scientists need to improve the system's tolerance to loss of some of
the data-carrying light particles, which "leak" in increasing amounts
the farther the beam travels.

No current satellite can handle such transmissions.

Rarity said the practice, known as "quantum cryptography," would
require construction and launch of new satellites.


 
*==============================================================*
"Communications without intelligence is noise;  Intelligence
without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
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