Toshiba to sell off-the-shelf quantum key distribution kit, eventually offer it as-a-service
- Reference: 1603169824
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/10/20/toshiba_qkd/
- Source link:
Quantum key distribution, [1]according to Tosh, involves "encoding each bit of the key upon a single photon (particle of light) transmitted, for example through an ordinary optical fiber. As any attempt to read the photons alters their encoding, this allows the secrecy of each key to be tested and guaranteed."
Thus it's not quantum computing or anything like that; it's a means for encoding information. Tosh's techies have published papers [2]here and [3]here if you're interested in the physics involved.
Toshiba knows a fair bit about this stuff thanks to the quantum tech lab it has run in Cambridge, UK, since 1991. The company’s expertise recently saw it hired to build a nationwide [4]QKD network across Japan , and it has also teamed with BT and Verizon on commercial QKD services.
Now the manufacturer says this tech is ready to go on sale, and even be deployed by its partners.
Exactly what Toshiba will sell hasn’t been disclosed yet, however the biz says it will offer a “multiplexing platform that allows the data and the quantum keys to be transmitted on the same fiber,” and a “platform for long-distance applications that maximizes speed and distance of key delivery.”
[5]
Toshiba's depiction of its mystery QKD box
The company has also shared a [6]picture of what looks like a 2U server that says “Quantum Key Distribution” on its fascia. And it says that by 2025, it will sell not only this physical gear, but also “launch a QKD service for organizations focusing on financial institutions.” Ergo, QKDaaS.
Senior veep and CDO Taro Shimada said the launch is all about giving businesses the tools they need as quantum computers become a reality.
“Sectors such as finance, health and government are now realizing the need to invest in technology that will prepare and protect them for the quantum economy of the future,” he said in a canned statement. “Our business plan goes far deeper and wider than selling quantum cryptographic hardware. We are developing a quantum platform and services that will not only deliver quantum keys and a quantum network, but ultimately enable the birth of a quantum internet.”
Leaving aside that last rhetorical flourish, the reference to protection is almost certainly a nod in the direction of those who believe future quantum computers will cut through current classical crypto like a knife through butter. Which is where things get interesting, because the world has seen this arms race coming. And now Toshiba is putting QKD on the market, some users will doubtless use it for less-than-entirely-scrupulous applications.
How will those nations that [7]already demand backdoors react once that happens? ®
Get our [8]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.toshiba.co.jp/qkd/en/what.htm
[2] https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-24-8-8081&id=338813
[3] https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.04484
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/29/japan_quantum_encrytion_network/
[5] https://www.toshiba.co.jp/qkd/images/products/products-01.png
[6] https://www.toshiba.co.jp/qkd/en/products.htm
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/11/international_statementon_end_to_end_encryption_and_public_safety/
[8] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: But will they though?
Okay, I can see why you're confused.
Some of the quantum computer research is in 'qyantum annealing' which is showing promise for finding optimised solutions. The DWave computer is of this type. Not useful for cracking public private key encryption, as you point out.
However, thetes another area of quantum computer research which does have the potential to run Shaw's algorithm and quickly factorise large numbers. Currently the number of qubits that can be entangled isn't large enough to be break public private key encryption, but researchers make progress every year.
No computer can break a properly used One Time Pad, but that involves the communicating parties having once been in the same room. Not practical for the purposes for which we currently use public private key encryption.
Quantum encryption is a method of ensuring that only the person you wish to communicate with has the encryption keys - evesdroooers can't escape detection.
I've spoken to people who've seen that kit in Cambridge in action. The owners are very precious about it: They want it installed in a rack on its own (It's just a 2U box) and nothing else anywhere near it. (i.e. empty nearby racks) because it's "sensitive".
I can see that going down well in a commercial data center.
Would you leave your QKD kit unattended?
I'm not sure that rackspace is much of a concern to the people they will be trying to flog this to. Equally, having it installed remotely in somebody else's data centre seems unlikely to me. I'd want this sort of kit somewhere physically secure.
I am surprised to hear that it's "sensitive" though. I worked in the university research group which was linked to Toshiba in the 90s. They have a huge amount of expertise in isolating sensitive electronics from the environment. There's no requirement to stick to a 2U form-factor, particularly if it's in its own rack, so why wouldn't they just shield it more? Was your information from a technology demo, or a "proper" installation? That could make a difference I suppose.
But will they though?
"Leaving aside that last rhetorical flourish, the reference to protection is almost certainly a nod in the direction of those who point out that future quantum computers will cut through current classical crypto like a knife through butter. "
If they were ever actually Quantum in the Feynman sense (the physicist that hypothesized them), they'd go through all possible states simultaneously. Factoring would be instantaneous. If they do *not* go through all states then they're *not* Quantum and whether you get the key or the factors not is simply down to luck. The trouble with that is quantum computers do NOT go through all possible states. You can find solutions that are more optimal for some runs via other methods.
Which makes them analogue computers. The computers of Feyman's days were analogue, they were electric circuits that you do things like backsolving and optimization. So you won't get a better key solver than you can make via analogue solvers.
Quantum key distribution is based on the notion that the properties of the photon are set by the act of measuring them. So an attacker in the middle reading the key can be detected, because the act of reading the key changes its value.
Not really connected except for the 'quantum-related' claim and it wouldn't fix the encryption problem anyway. How does distributing a key that can be instantly cracked fixup the instant cracking? Of course it doesn't, but throwing it in adds more opportunities to push the "the future is quantum" meme.
It doesn't work, there's a filter signal "successful entanglement" you have to pass to filter for the subset of photons that have the same state with respect to the detectors at either end, so in effect, you're flagging the two *detectors* as 'same' state with respect to the photon. The attackers detector is in a different state and he gets a different result, but he does not *set* the properties of the photon by measuring it. He will just attack the successful entanglement signal and substitute his own signal.
That the photon's properties are the net effect between the detector and detected, should be obvious. You literally use it in Red-shift experiments.
That the photon is not oscillating at some EM frequency rather that the net difference between the resonance in matter and resonance in wave should also be obvious. Look at how a small change in velocity results in huge change in EM frequency, yet light's relative velocity stays within ~10e-15!
That the universe is oscillating in resonance, should also be obvious, the photon travels across the universe and has nearly the same apparent EM frequency! A detector across the universe and a detector here on earth would be very very nearly in the same state! i.e. resonant.
I'm not telling you something that's not staring you in the face here.
There is another year to run on this massive money boondongle:
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/policies/quantum-technologies-flagship
Part of the EU's investment in fundamental science that brought me such side-splitters as "loophole free proof of quantum entanglement" complete with pre-filtered set of data before the Bells test. But it also brought a raft of experiments showing repeatability in subatomic motions, electrons returning to the same place and so on.
I suspect Tosh wants a chunk of the money by promising something in future that would be trivial to deliver now, if it actually worked.