On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 3:23 PM, Paul Hoffman <paul.hoff...@vpnc.org> wrote: > On Jan 27, 2012, at 6:43 PM, Noon Silk wrote: > >> I think it's important to note that it's obviously completely wrong to >> say "QKD is snake-oil", > > Some of us would disagree with that statement. Historically in the U.S., > snake oil was > something that promised a benefit over other remedies. QKD says it is "more > secure" > than current key establishment systems, however it is only practical in a > very limited > number of environments where those other key establishment systems would be > just > as secure.
There are two problems with this statement, the first is you're supposing QKD is one single proposal; of course it isn't, there are several protocols for it. It may be that companies (as I mentioned above), claim their *implementations* are more secure, but I addressed that above. The second problem is that the whole game of cryptography research is surely to propose a system, comment on the areas you believe it is strong, and see if anyone finds side-channel attacks, or points out flaws in your thinking. And why should QKD be different here? Do you also complain on the hash-forum list that hash functions that don't make the cut are snake-oil? It seems to me that the above issue (as with most others) tend to be side-channel attacks. And as SMB says, absolutely no-one is surprised by this, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be interesting when it happens. To call and end to QKD every time it does, though, seems a little over-the-top ... >> what you *can* say is that someone *selling* >> *any* demonstratably-insecure crypto device as a secure one, is snake >> oil. So, that is to say, you can only claim snake-oil in reference to >> a vendor and a device, not a field of research. > > Again, we disagree. There are many fields of research that market themselves > as useful when > compared to other fields, and QKD is one of those. You're supposing that they're marketed *commercially* though; as I said above then it's legitimate to be annoyed if they don't deliver, but you can't step into a researchers office and yell at her for getting funding to try and pursue ideas in this field, claiming that it is snake-oil based on the research by *those same researchers* (i.e. the original article in this thread). > --Paul Hoffman -- Noon Silk Fancy a quantum lunch? https://sites.google.com/site/quantumlunch/ "Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy — the joy of being this signature." _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
