Security, Eavesdropping, and Quantum Mechanics with Prof Mark Fox Since the first leaks of information from Wikileaks at the start of the decade interest in privacy and security has piqued, both for governments and citizens. The most recent revelations regarding the ‘eavesdropping’ of the National Security Agency (NSA) and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) on private conversations has forced the public to question how much privacy are they willing to give up in favour of security. Governments it seems have answered that question for them with new reports implying that agencies routinely decrypted security systems that keep our information safe. Much of the latest trends in encryption are focused mainly in the field of quantum cryptography, an area which Prof Mark Fox of the University of Sheffield’s Department of Physics and Astronomy opened up to audiences earlier this year. In his February talk Prof Fox sought to answer the question ‘How do you stop a cyber-thief from eavesdropping on a confidential financial transaction?’ but nowadays it might be reasonable to instead ask how do you stop a government agency from doing the exact same thing? Toshiba has recently invented a quantum cryptography network that, supposedly, not even the NSA can hack. Quantum networks are so sensitive that an even slight attempt to intercept their signals disrupts them and renders them useless to the hacker. Now there aren’t many people better than Prof Fox that can explain this is finer detail so have a look his Inspiration & Co talk in which he outlines the processes of quantum encryption.
Posted on: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 15:01:40 +0000
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