SafeUM
Home Blog Services Download Help About Recharge

Axarhöfði 14, 110 Reykjavik, Iceland

Iceland - 2015
SafeUM
Blog
Services
Download
Help
About
Recharge
Menu
Archive
TOP Security!
12 Nov 2014

China builds computer network impenetrable to hackers

China will soon have the world's most secure major computer network, making communications between Beijing and Shanghai impenetrable to hackers and giving it a decisive edge in its quiet cyberwar with the United States.

China is building the world’s first long-distance quantum encryption network, a 1,200-mile line that will be theoretically unhackable. 

In two years' time, a fibre-optic cable between the two cities will transmit quantum encryption keys that can completely secure government, financial and military information from eavesdroppers. "We learnt after the Edward Snowden affair that we are always being hacked," said Prof Pan Jianwei, a quantum physicist at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei, who is leading the project. "Since most of the products we buy come from foreign companies, we wanted to accelerate our own programme," he added.

"This is very urgent because classical encryption was not invented in China, so we want to develop our own technology." The £60 million cable, which is being funded by the central government and has been supported by the Central Military Commission, will initially mostly be used for money transfers by ICBC, the world's largest bank.

However, Prof Pan said eventually all communications in China, down to storing photographs on cloud servers, could feature quantum encryption. "Ten years ago it was not so easy to get sufficient funding to support theoretical research, but since 2006 and 2007 when the economy really went well, they have been putting more money into research and then it really sped up," he said.

Half an hour's drive away from Prof Pan's office, at Quantum Communications Technology, a company spun out of the university to commercialise the technology, the importance of the project is clear. On the walls are framed photographs of visits from almost all of China's top leaders, including president Xi Jinping. A huge video screen shows 56 terminals across the city that are already using quantum encryption. Currently, anyone wanting to send a secret message over the internet encrypts their communications so that only someone with the right code at the other end can unlock it.

But the US National Security Agency reportedly has computers powerful enough to crack encryption codes and is developing a quantum computer that will be able to run calculations so quickly that it can easily defeat encryption. That means that, if it is able to tap fibre-optic cables and copy data travelling down the line, its hackers should be able to unlock the information.

Quantum encryption relies upon writing the encryption codes, or keys, upon single photons of light (a quantum particle). If a hacker tries to eavesdrop on the line, they will disturb the encoding of the photon and be detected. Consequently, said Prof Pan, it should provide perfect security. "Of course, although quantum communication can in principle provide absolute security, in practice, we have to prove it thoroughly by various hacking tests. So we are inviting the finest hackers to attack our system," he said.

"The Chinese are really pushing the boundaries," said Raymond Laflamme, the head of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo in Canada. "They are moving at an incredible rate. No one else around the world has plans that are this ambitious."

"China is putting itself in the position of having secure private information that other countries will not be able to tap," he added. At least six other networks transmitting quantum encryption keys have been built around the world, including one run by the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency in Massachusetts. But all are on a much smaller scale. China's progress, which will also include the launch in 2016 of a satellite dedicated to quantum communication research, is likely to trigger a global race. "We heard Nasa is building a quantum line between Los Angeles and San Francisco," said Prof Pan. "And IBM and Google are both investing heavily."

However, Prof Pan and Prof Laflamme said the development of the quantum system still required a great deal of work. Photons can only travel for a short distance, which means the new Beijing to Shanghai line will include 20 nodes, each of which is vulnerable to hackers. And the rate of transmitting keys remains slow. "At the moment, it is only useful for a large user, like a government,” said Prof Pan.

Tags:
USA China trends data protection
Source:
The Telegraph
2163
Other NEWS
3 Jul 2020 safeum news imgage An encrypted messaging service has been infiltrated by police
4 May 2020 safeum news imgage Two-Factor Authentication ​What Is It and Why You Should Use It
12 Dec 2019 safeum news imgage Encryption is under threat - this is how it affects you
4 Nov 2019 safeum news imgage Should Big Decisions Be Based on Data or Your Intuition?
7 Jun 2018 safeum news imgage VPNFilter malware infecting 500,000 devices is worse than we thought
4 Jun 2018 safeum news imgage Hackers target Booking.com in criminal bid to steal hundreds of thousands from customers
1 Jun 2018 safeum news imgage Operator of World's Top Internet Hub Sues German Spy Agency
30 May 2018 safeum news imgage US says North Korea behind malware attacks
29 May 2018 safeum news imgage Facebook and Google targeted as first GDPR complaints filed
25 May 2018 safeum news imgage A new reason to not buy these cheap Android devices
24 May 2018 safeum news imgage Flaws in smart pet devices, apps could come back to bite owners
23 May 2018 safeum news imgage Google sued for 'clandestine tracking' of 4.4m UK iPhone users' browsing data
21 May 2018 safeum news imgage LocationSmart reportedly leaked phone location data onto the web
18 May 2018 safeum news imgage The SEC created its own scammy ICO to teach investors a lesson
17 May 2018 safeum news imgage Thieves suck millions out of Mexican banks in transfer heist
All news
SafeUM
Confidential Terms of Use Our technologies Company
Follow us
Download
SafeUM © Safe Universal Messenger

Axarhöfði 14,
110 Reykjavik, Iceland

Iceland - 2015