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ABSTRACT:
MagiQ is in the final stages of testing a system for quantum cryptography, which it plans to release commercially within the next few months. Encryption engineers have long waxed lyrical about quantum cryptography, but this is among the very first commercial implementations. The advantage of quantum cryptography schemes is that the code they generate are simply not-even in theory-breakable.
The scheme devised by MagiQ, called Navajo, does not use quantum effects to transmit the secret data. Instead, it is the keys used to encrypt the data that rely on quantum theory. If these keys are changed frequently (up to 1,000 times a second in Navajo's case), the risk that an eavesdropper without the key would be able to decrypt the data can be proved mathematically to be zero. Of course, given the key, the task would become a trivial one.
Navajo transmits the changing key sequence over a secure fibre-optic link as a stream of polarised photons (indivisible particles of light). Because the polarisation reflects the amount of electromagnetic radiation allowed to radiate at an angle to a light beam's direction, it can be considered to be a measure of the angular dependence of the light. |
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