The system, called a quantum network, could not be intercepted without alerting the intended recipient of an electronic message, project researcher John M. Myers said.
McKay Professor of Applied Physics and Professor of Physics Tai T. Wu, the head of the Harvard lab experimenting with the quantum code key system, was on vacation and could not be reached for comment.
The quantum network involves the signaling of weak light impulses between two locations. Any message would be accompanied by a scrambled key that would be encoded by the sender and decoded by the recipient. The message could only be accessed if the code were successfully unscrambled.
Once the weak light impulses reached their destination, the sender and receiver would compare elements of their decoded keys to make sure they were identical, Myers said. He said a tenet of quantum physics would make this comparison the essential factor that would make the quantum code key a successful encoding system.
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that if a person observes particles in a specific state, then the person must have altered the state of those particles merely by having observed them.
Unlike strong light, weak light would be subject to the constrains of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle because of the low levels of energy involved, Myers said.
Myers said the Heisenberg Uncertainly Principle implied that a hacker could not steal a key encoded in weak light waves en route to its destination without altering the key itself.
He said two parties using a quantum key code would be sure that their key was not intercepted en route if the keys were identical. Conversely, the parties would know not to activate their keys—which in turn would open the message protected by the key—if there were discrepancies between the sender and recipient.
“The peculiar security offered by a quantum key distribution is security against undetected eavesdropping on the key,” Myers said.
Myers added that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle guaranteed that a hacker could not steal the same code that would ultimately be received.
Myers said the quantum code key would be an improvement over current number-based encryption systems.
Present electronic coding systems rely on large numbers that are extremely difficult to factor and therefore impossible to hack using present technology.
But Myers said there is no theoretical reason that the numbers could not be decoded in the future with improved number-factoring programs.
“If some student in the hills of India figures out how to do that in a hurry, then the cryptography used to send banking information over the internet is no longer secure,” Myers said.
Despite the theoretical advantages of the quantum key code, Myers said researchers had to ensure the quantum network would be as secure as the equations suggest it should be.