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This story is amazing. As a professional cryptographer I urge HN to vote it to the top of the front page.

• carapace 7y ago
  It feels like it is [amazing], but it also feels like propaganda. (Of course it could be both: propaganda can be based on truth.) Can you expand a little on why you find it amazing?
  • matthewdgreen 7y ago
    Since I’ve stepped in it by letting my amusement show: 1. Quantum encryption (actually quantum key distribution) is not going to make Huawei — or anyone’s — cellular networks “hack proof”. Nor does this even matter. 2. We already have very strong classical encryption algorithms, unless the US or someone has a quantum computer. People don’t break networks in frontal attacks on encryption schemes. 3. The rest of the article is bonkers.
    • carapace 7y ago
      Cheers! :)
    • AstralStorm 7y ago
      It is very easy to create backdoor classical encryption systems by adding multiple keys, especially for public key cryptosystems. If this is done in hardware, you'd be hard pressed to find it. Not so with quantum encryption. At least I'm not aware of research that shows that this can be done. Though I have seen some interesting spying instead of the bass quantum encryption schemes which didn't use all of the phase and magnitude.
      • matthewdgreen 7y ago
        I have no reason to believe this is true. Side channel attacks on QKD have been very effective, which is a strong indication that the ability to trust your hardware is essential to the functioning of these systems. You’re proposing a model where one cannot trust their hardware, and I see no evidence that modern QKD systems have been hardened against that attack. PS I’ve worked a lot on cryptographic backdoors in the non-QKD setting but I don’t work on QKD.