Air Force wants unhackable comm, like in 'Mass Effect 3'

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://gcn.com/articles/2012/04/19/air-force-quantum-communications-mass-effect-3.aspx

By Greg Crowe
GCN.com
April 19, 2012

The U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research is funding a group of 
scientists from seven universities to investigate the best way to 
develop “quantum memories” for securing long-range communications.

The team, led by scientists at Georgia Institute of Technology, will 
evaluate three ways of creating entangled quantum memories for enabling 
the secure transmission of information over great distances, according 
to an announcement from Georgia Tech. The five-year, $8.5 million 
project also includes scientists from Columbia, Harvard and Stanford 
universities; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and the 
universities of Michigan and Wisconsin.

The basic idea of all three methods is to use “entangled photons” — 
photons that are bound together and represent ones and zeroes according 
to their individual polarization. The difference in them is in the 
physical platforms that control the matter/light interaction used to 
generate them.

The research group’s task is to figure out which method or combination 
of methods will have the best application.

(Interestingly enough, this is exactly the same method of communication 
used in the “Mass Effect 3” computer game to talk securely from 
starships back to their home bases. One might wonder if that is where 
they got the idea, although Georgia Tech physics professor Alex Kuzmich 
said work in this field has been going on for the past 15 years.)

[...]

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