>At 11:31 AM -0400 4/20/10, Perry E. Metzger wrote: >>I wonder why it is that, in spite of almost universal disinterest in the >>security community, quantum key distribution continues to be a subject >>of active technological development.
Paul Hoffman wrote: >You hit it: "almost". As long as a few researchers are interested, and there is money to be thrown down the drain^w^w^wat them, there >will be active development. I too once worked exclusively in the world of classical cryptography and was sceptical of QKD. I now work in both worlds - classical cryptography and QKD. I now know that QKD can be a part of a high performance, cost competitive, highly secure system. I found that having an open mind about new technologies - and I don't mean just QKD - can and does provide insights that are useful in not only developing those new technologies, but also in improving existing ones. Just because "everyone" who claims to be a crypto expert, or a few of the more well-known popular experts (often the ones with big egos and loud voices) say that crypto is not the weakest link, or that QKD is a bad idea, doesn't mean it's true forever, even if you want to believe that it's true now. I don't know what the future holds, but when I think about what technology might be like in 10, 20, 50 years from now, I think back to what technology was like 10, 20, 50 years ago. Things change. And they change a lot. I doubt that public key encryption as we know it will survive the next 50 years. Maybe it won't survive the next 10 or 20 years. Maybe it will - I just don't know. I believe that it's important to acknowledge what we don't know, and to do our best to mitigate risks that may come from not knowing. We can of course identify and mitigate certain risks, even if we don't know all the facts about the risk itself. I worry when I see critically secure systems being deployed that rely exclusively on public key cryptography for key distribution. I'm disappointed when I read and hear comments from people that reject outright, even the possibility that QKD might be practical, and have a place in securing our current and future systems. To respond directly to Perry's comment quoted at the beginning of this email, I can assure you that there is actually very strong interest in QKD in the security community. The interest is not purely academic or oriented towards research. It has a very sound practical, commercial, and security basis. -- John Leiseboer, CTO, QuintessenceLabs Everything expressed by me in this email is my personal opinion. It is not necessarily the opinion of my employer. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majord...@metzdowd.com
