Harvard has built a quantum network that protects against hackers in Boston using existing fiber cables.

Physicists at Harvard University have built what they believe is the world's longest secure quantum communication network using 22 miles of existing fiber optic cables.

The experiment, published in the science journal Nature, connects two functional quantum computer nodes to each other through a strange physical phenomenon called “entanglement.” This allowed them to share data over a distance of 22 miles that could not be intercepted according to the laws of physics.

Q-day

The world is currently in a technological race to secure the world's computers before “Q Day,” a hypothetical point in the near future when bad actors will have access to quantum computers powerful enough to crack current encryption methods.

While major institutions such as banks, military facilities, and the healthcare industry have begun adopting protocols to protect data, there is currently no substitute for data transmission.

Basically, no matter how well encrypted, there is a risk of unwanted interception at any time of transmission.

Quantum computers and quantum networking have the potential to eliminate this risk due to the nature of quantum information management.

Quantum network

Data cannot be copied in a quantum system. Because quantum information is highly fragmented. Even the smallest transgression, including something as innocuous as running a simple scientific measurement, can change the data, rendering it unusable.

Since quantum information cannot be copied, it cannot be transferred from one node to another in traditional ways. Instead, it should be “interlaced” at both points. This was accomplished by using diamonds with a unique defect in their “heart” that allowed scientists to exploit the gap to intercept quantum information.

Simply put, quantum mechanics allows information to be teleported but not teleported.

For this reason, the biggest fear is not that bad actors will build quantum systems to hack data—even the most well-funded adversarial organizations may be decades away from accessing quantum systems—but that old data is encrypted with non-quantum safeguards, stolen from today's systems and transmissions, and then decrypted. ) is stored and later when bad actors find a way into a modern quantum computer system.

In the meantime, the experimental quantum network systems being developed today may one day serve as the primary media for transmitting sensitive information.

For example, instead of sending financial transaction data over conventional banking “wires” or legacy networks, institutions can store information in well-secured data centers and “send” it through quantum meshes to other institutions or stakeholders, where it is absolute. There is no possibility of hacking.

This could have major implications for the decentralized financial community, as the idea of ​​”owning” information can be enhanced inextricably across connected nodes. In this way, it can be assumed that digital assets like cryptocurrency can be protected from all kinds of network-based attacks.

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