New Mathematics Quantum Cryptographies

Original version from this story appeared in How many magazines.

Heavy problems are usually not a welcome type. But cryptographers love them. This is because certain solid mathematical problems are subject to the safety of modern encryption. Any smart trick trick will be accelerated most forms of cryptography.

Researchers were found several years ago a radical new access to encryption This lacks this potentially weak place. The approach delivers peculiar characteristics of quantum physics. But unlike the earlier schemes of quantum encryption, which work only on several special tasks, a new approach can achieve much wider range of tasks. And that could work even if all problems in the heart of ordinary cryptography “classic” cryptography easily solve.

But this striking discovery relied on unrealistic assumptions. The result was “more evidence of the concept,” he said ” Firm, butCryptographic researcher in Simons Institute for calculating theory in Berkelei, California. “It’s not a statement about the real world.”

Now, and new paper Two cryptographers set the way to quantum cryptography without those alienated assumptions. “This work says that if certain assumptions are correct, then there must be quantum cryptography,” Ma said.

The castle in the sky

You can think of modern cryptography like a tower with three basic works. The first part is the bed deep under the tower, which is made of severe mathematical problems. The tower itself is the second part – there you can find certain cryptographic protocols that allow you to send private messages, sign digital documents, live secret ballots and more.

In between, providing those everyday applications on a mathematical base, is the foundation of radiation of construction blocks One-way functions. They are responsible for asymmetry inherent in any encryption scheme. “It’s a one-way because you can encrypt messages, but you can’t decipher them,” he said Mark ZhandriCryptographer in NTT research.

During the 1980s, researchers proved that cryptography built on war in one-way functions ensured security for many different tasks. But later decades, they are still not sure that the motherboard is strong enough to support it. The problem is that the movement is made of special difficult problems – technically known as NP problems – whose characteristic is defining that it is easy to verify that any candidate solution is correct. (For example, the punching number in its main factors is the problem of NP: It is difficult to do for a large number, but easily check.)

Many of these problems look essentially heavy but computer scientists they could not prove it. If someone discovers the genius algorithm to quickly solve the most difficult problems of NP, the asshole will fall apart, and the entire tower will collapse.

Unfortunately, you can’t simply move the tower elsewhere. Foundations of tower-one-way functions – can only sit on a backward problem of NP.

To build a tower to stronger problems, cryptograms should be a new foundation that is not made of one-way functions. It seemed impossible until only a few years ago, when researchers realized that quantum physics could help.