[118641] in Cypherpunks
Quantum confidential
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Mon Oct 4 17:48:36 1999
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Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 16:25:11 -0400
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
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Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
At 2:00 PM -0400 on 10/4/99, ecarm-news@ecarm.org wrote:
> Title: Quantum confidential
> Resource Type: News Article
> Date: 2 October 1999
> Source: New Scientist
> Author:
> Keywords: ENCRYPTION ,CRYPTOGRAPHY ,QUANTUM COMPUTER,COMMUNICATION
>
> Abstract/Summary:
> Want to beat the hackers once and for all? As Simon Singh finds out, the
> enigmatic quantum world is about to make your secrets safe as houses
>
> IT COULD HAPPEN in a few months or a few years. But sooner or later, a
> mathematician could make a discovery that jeopardises international security,
> threatens the future of Internet commerce, and imperils the privacy
>of e-mails.
> Today's codes and ciphers are good, to be sure. But it is probably only a
> matter of time before they become useless.
>
> With the coming of the information age, we rely ever more heavily on
> cryptography to protect us from snoopers, cyber-crooks and Big Brother. Some
> of today's most secure codes exploit the fact that while it is easy
>to multiply two
> prime numbers together, it is almost impossible to start with the
>answer and work
> out which two primes were used to create it. But the day a
>mathematical genius
> discovers a short cut for finding the hidden prime numbers, these codes will
> crumble.
>
> Original URL: http://www.newscientist.co.uk/ns/19991002/quantumcon.html
>
> Added: Mon Oct 4 12:1:50 -040 1999
> Contributed by: Keeffee
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
