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Building Quantum Safe Communication Over Internet Infrastructure

By IQT News posted 20 Mar 2019

(TechCrunch) We’re closer than ever to the deployment of a commercial quantum computing systems — which means that we need to develop a security scheme that will protect data exchanged between quantum computers on the existing internet infrastructure. The basic components of a security solution are already out there in these authors’ opinion. They suggest that using a combination of overlay security, blockchain, advanced cryptographic systems and Merkle trees with Lamport signatures, we believe we can develop a practical, inexpensive — and even easy to implement — quantum-safe security system for internet exchanges.
Overlay security provides what could be a model for quantum-safe communications. If, for example, we were to send part of our credit card data (encrypted, of course) via WhatsApp, and another string via Gmail, we would in essence be reproducing the entangled aspect of quantum communications.
The secret-sharing protocol developed by Professor Adi Shamir, which utilizes a variable number of channels to reconstruct a message, depending on the message. Shamir’s secret sharing is based on using polynomials over a finite field, where each “participant” — in our case each channel — receives one point of the polynomial; the secret is the free coefficient of the polynomial.
One way to boost authentication is the blockchain.In a blockchain, the identity of a trusted party would be carried out by numerous already trusted entities, including governmental, financial and notary entities. Each trusted entity would have a portion of the security secret
The authors call for  Quantum Safe Signatures for financial transactions, in a way that hackers will not be able to compromise. There are numerous signature schemes already in use, including Lamport one-time signatures,. Even better are Merkle trees, which include many private keys in the leaves.

 

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