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Boffin comes up with laser security
INSECURITY BOFFIN Jacob Scheuer of Tel Aviv University's School of Electrical Engineering has emerged from his smoke-filled lab with a laser based defence system designed to repel hackers.
The technology does not cut hackers in two, instead it uses existing fibre-optic and computer technology to protect communications security.
According to Science Daily, Scheuer's method transmits binary lock-and-key information in the form of light pulses. This means that a shared key code can be unlocked by the sender and receiver and absolutely nobody else.
Apparently he is planning to show his findings off at the next Conference for Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) in San Jose, California in May.
Scheuer said his discovery could lead to a replacement for the cracked RSA encryption system.
His technique uses a key bearer that transmits a binary code in the form of 1s and 0s. However instead of numbers the system uses laser pulses. The person replies with another set of laser messages but no hacker can tell the two keys apart. Once the keys have been exchanged, subsequent messages are completely unintelligible to a viewer.
The laser transmissions can reach over 3,000 miles without the signal being lost and is more reliable than quantum cryptography. µ
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The system (as described here: http://www.eng.tau.ac.il/~kobys/GFL/GFL.htm) is not secure. A sophisticated attacker can tap the fiber and track the frequency shifts to steal the key.
The article says:
. "The trick," says Dr. Scheuer, "is for those at either end of the fiber optic link to send different laser signals they can distinguish between, but which look identical to an eavesdropper."
So I guess he found a way to somehow do something to the light that isn't easy to decipher unless you know what it is? But then it would be like pre-shared keys since you first need to know eachother's setup.
I always wonder for what this stuff is used though, fear of china again I guess, since they are the only 'enemy' that has the technology to even try to break normal stuff like they had before already, oh and perhaps north korea? But I don't think they've shown to be much of hackers geniuses so far either.
Can't be banks either since they have their secrets available to anybody really it seems, any cop any government anybody that asks, and the man on the street in the form of lost CD's and flashdrives.
But I'm guessing this is simply a badly written article. I've heard of transmission methods where it's impossible to intercept messages without the intended receiver realizing it's been intercepted, and that may be what the author was attempting to convey. So when you send the key, you don't send further messages in that key until it's been confirmed that no one has eavesdropped.
Again, just guessing.
So, why can no one else read the codes that the sender and reciever can obviously read? This is sort of like saying that hackers can't hack a system with fiber optics because fiber optics use light.