MagiQ projects its Navajo to work over distances of 18 to 25 miles between
sender and recipient. FROM...
Briefing: Digital Defenses
Cryptography
A quantum leap over short distances.
By Martin LaMonica
January 13, 2003
Scientists have long tantalized the computer industry with the unbridled
potential of a computer based on quantum theory. But while such a machine
is still theoretical, the quantum bit, or qubit, is ready to leave the labs
to become an "uncrackable" security data cordon.
MagiQ Technologies, based in Somerville, Massachusetts, is one of a handful
of companies seeking to commercialize quantum cryptography, the technique
of securing data transmission by putting decades-old quantum theory into
practice. Rather than send cryptographic keys that unlock scrambled
messages in packets of data, quantum cryptographic systems distribute keys
through a stream of polarized photons, or packets of light, over
fiber-optic cables. The sender represents a binary number with each
photon's polarization, or physical orientation, and the receiver uses a
filter to read the number. What makes the technology especially attractive
is that any attempt by a third party to view the transmission of the
quantum key will inevitably disturb it and leave a trace.
MagiQ founder Robert Gelfond, a former Wall Street trader, saw an
"extraordinary" business opportunity when he investigated quantum
information processing in the late '90s. He discovered that no company was
trying to capitalize on the quantum cryptography research being conducted
at university, government, and corporate research labs.
"I thought this is a little early, but not 10 or 15 years early," says Mr.
Gelfond. After recruiting a group of fellow angel investors in 1999,
including Jeff Bezos, Mr. Gelfond hired as chief scientist quantum
computing expert Hoi-Kwong Lo and founded the company with a total of $6.9
million in funding. The company built a prototype quantum key distribution
(QKD) system and started plans to commercialize it, despite the
technological shortcomings involved in sending the quantum signals across
long distances.
MagiQ's QKD device, code-named Navajo, is on track for beta release early
this year, with completion expected by the end of 2003. The company is
aiming the product, which will cost roughly $100,000 to secure a corporate
data center, at government intelligence agencies and business customers
with highly sensitive data stored in mainstream computing environments.
What's to motivate government agencies and businesses to embrace quantum
cryptography, especially in these lean spending times? MagiQ officials like
to emphasize research that suggests encryption algorithms, and even
1,024-bit keys, won't be safe forever given the rapid growth of processing
performance to crack these large encryption keys. What's more, academics
maintain that a quantum computer, or a breakthrough mathematical theorem,
could easily crack today's encryption schemes.
Even with an iron-clad guarantee of safe key distribution, however, quantum
cryptography has serious limitations, a very notable one being distance.
MagiQ projects its Navajo to work over distances of 18 to 25 miles between
sender and recipient. Early last year, Id Quantique, a spin-off of the
University of Geneva that has developed its own quantum cryptography
products, demonstrated key distribution over distances of about 40 miles.
Repeaters are still in development but most are impractical and have the
potential to compromise security.
"Installing secure facilities to repeat a signal every 30 miles is a
nonstarter in the commercial world," says Laura Koetzle, a security analyst
at Forrester Research. "But for a short distance, like from the White House
to the Pentagon or from the White House to Langley, Virginia, it would work
right now."
BBN Technologies, based in Cambridge, not far from Somerville, is trying to
make quantum cryptography as versatile as the Internet itself, which works
across copper, fiber, and satellite networks. The company has a prototype
system that can repeat photon signals in "trusted relay points" beyond the
40-mile limit of competing technology. More ambitious is a quantum network
switch under development that would ensure that the network owner didn't
tamper with the keys. BBN is looking to test its network QKD system in the
metropolitan Boston fiber network when work on the switch is completed in
about a year and a half, says Chip Elliott, principal engineer at BBN.
"Most people don't understand that this stuff is real now, not five years
from now," says Mr. Elliott. "It requires serious engineering, but not a
miracle."
The next phase of MagiQ's product development calls for quantum
cryptography components that would let telecom carriers offer extremely
secure virtual private networks over their fiber cables. Eventually, MagiQ
executives see quantum cryptography on desktop computers.
Martin LaMonica is a Boston-based freelance writer.
Write to Martin LaMonica.
http://www.redherring.com/insider/2003/01/quantum011303.html
