WHAT’S THE STORY?

CHINA is preparing to launch what it’s calling an “unhackable” communications network in the city of Jinan, with it being described by state media as a milestone in cyber security.

It may be a pioneering project but, if successful, it could also see the country leaving the West behind with international banks likely to be among its main customers when the technology eventually goes into production.

Most of us are aware of the vulnerability of the internet, which has fallen victim to increasingly sophisticated attacks, and would welcome any moves to make it more secure.

In the Jinan project, 200 users from China’s military, finance, government and utility sectors will be able to send messages confident that they are the only people reading them – thanks to the use of quantum cryptography.

WHAT’S THAT?

QUANTUM cryptography is a technique that can be used to ensure the confidentiality of data transmitted between two parties using elementary particles such as photons, the fundamental particle of visible light – a form of encryption that far surpasses existing methods.

If you want to send a secure communication, the key required to decrypt the message is hidden in a complex mathematical problem, which would normally require a very powerful computer to be number-crunched.

However, computer power has increased in leaps and bounds over the years, and this has shortened encryption’s shelf life as well as increasing its vulnerability.

Quantum cryptography – or what is known as quantum key distribution (QKD) – works slightly differently.

The key to the secured missive is sent separately embedded in particles of light. Then you send the encrypted message, which the recipient can read using the key they previously received.

If a hacker tries to intercept the light particles they are destroyed and the sender and recipient will know something is wrong – hence the Chinese claim that their system is unhackable.

IS THIS TECHNOLOGY NEW?

NOT really – quantum cryptography has been around for some years, but while its potential may have been realised by some, it hasn’t been commercially exploited.

Back in 2004 the first quantum transaction was carried out by researchers in Vienna, using a long-distance quantum connection called entanglement to protect data.

This allows two particles to behave like a single entity, regardless of their distance apart, meaning that if one particle is disturbed its partner reacts, thereby revealing the presence of a hacker.

The researchers managed to deposit €3000 (£2682) into their bank account securely using entangled photons.

Oxford University professor and quantum cryptographer Artur Ekert, who is also director of the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore, said: “There is still a way to go before it becomes a standard commercial proposition, but we are getting there faster than I expected.”

WHY HAS IT NEVER BEEN DEVELOPED?

EXPERTS in the field say that people simply didn’t think it was needed because the mathematical difficulty of the existing encryption system was so high.

While the research and technology are not new, experts have been divided on whether or not there was a market for it given the expense of developing such projects.

Quantum physicist Professor Anton Zeilinger, from Austria’s Vienna University, has been trying to convince the EU to develop such initiatives for more than a decade.

He said: “Europe has simply missed the boat. Europe has been dragging its feet and this has hindered us from being able to compete.”

A number of QKD networks are operating in Europe and the US, but mostly as research projects.

Where China has stolen a march on the West is building the Jinan network.

Physicist Valerio Scarani from Singapore’s Centre for Quantum Technologies summed it up thus: “We have to admit that when China invests into something, they have the financial power and manpower that is beyond probably anything else in the world except the US military.”

The developments in China are likely to come under the spotlight at two events being held in the US – Black Hat USA, an annual info security conference, and Def Con 25, a hackers’ convention, are both under way in Las Vegas.