With Halloween just around the corner, and 2020 continuing to be a very scary time, we thought a blog post examining Einstein’s description of quantum entanglement, “spooky action at a distance” would be fitting.
Quantum entanglement, a cornerstone of quantum theory, is described as two particles that are entangled, or correlated with one another, predictably interact no matter the space between them. If you measure a quantum property of one, you can know, with certainty, the correlating property of its pair, no matter how far apart they are. When you mess with one, you instantaneously change the other. Einstein famously doubted that entanglement was actually a thing and dismissed it as “spooky action at a distance.”
This “spooky action” is the quantum phenomenon behind some of the “unhackable” cryptographic protocols like Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). The basic idea behind quantum encryption is that when you send a secure message, you encrypt your message using a cryptographic key encoded in entangled quantum particles or millions of polarized light particles known as photons.
The security of QKD stems from the ability to detect any intrusion on the QKD transmission. Because of the unique and fragile properties of photons and their entangled state, any third party (or eavesdropper) who tries to read or copy the photons in any way will change the photons’ state. The change will be detected by the endpoints, alerting them that the key has been tampered with and must be discarded. A new key is then transmitted. Moreover, since the keys generated are truly random, they are protected from future hacking attempts.
While quantum entanglement continues to suffer from distance limitations making it a scary proposition for most commercial environments, Phio TX from Quantum Xchange can be deployed today and will keep your data safe from the quantum boogeyman! It works within your existing crypto infrastructure; is uniquely capable of making traditional keys quantum-safe; features all PQC candidate algorithms as a standard feature; and if QKD is desired, it overcomes its distance and delivery limitations. Learn how it works here.
For more spooky fun, check out our new infographic on scary cybersecurity stats not to snub, here.
