Bit Commitment for Quantum Encryption AchievedCategory: Science & Technology
Posted: November 5, 2013 10:28AM
Secure communication is a necessity for many modern day functions, such as transmitting financial information, but so often it seems that no matter how hard someone tries to secure data, someone else tries harder to steal it. One future technology that could thwart the data thief is quantum encryption, but even it has imperfections. Researchers at the University of Cambridge however, have successfully demonstrated a way to overcome those imperfections.
Bit commitment is a scheme that secures data from being changed by any party, after being sent. Despite the promise of quantum encryption though, quantum mechanics alone cannot achieve bit commitment. Some fifteen years ago though, a researcher had the idea to bring relativity into the system, to cover quantum mechanics' flaws. At the time the idea itself was flawed, but now the Cambridge researchers have figured out how to combine the two physics and were able to send perfectly secure data between Geneva and Singapore.
While it is easy to imagine how bit commitment could revolutionize secure communication, this research is still at an early stage, making it impossible to predict its potential impact.
Source: University of Cambridge