Moscow, May 15 – DSTU scientists have proposed protecting communication channels using quantum teleportation features. According to them, the developed encryption algorithm will greatly complicate the interception of data, which will make the hackers’ efforts almost meaningless. The results of the study were published in the electronics website.
Quantum cryptography is the science of encoding and transmitting messages using quantum mechanics objects, such as electrons in a stream or photons in an optical fibre.
Researchers at Don State Technical University (DSTU) have proposed a way to increase the security of the widespread BB84 protocol, which generates a secret key to encrypt transmitted data.
According to university experts, the most important thing when creating encryption software is to maintain a balance between when the encryption was created and the level of security. Connecting their module to existing quantum protocols will not upset this balance, but, on the contrary, will allow, at the same time, to increase the level of information security.
The system created at DSTU is based on one of the principles of quantum mechanics, according to which it is impossible to create an exact copy of a quantum system without destroying its source. This “transfer” of information about the quantum states of particles over a distance is called quantum teleportation.
“Within the framework of the classical approach, in principle, nothing prevents us, having received arbitrarily complete information about an object, from creating another object that is an exact copy of the first. And quantum mechanics prohibits such reproduction of states: it is impossible, having received complete information about a quantum state, to create a second state, exactly the same one without destroying the first state,” Savarian said.
In order to prevent eavesdropping on the communication channel, DSTU scientists suggest supplementing the semantic part of the message with a set of characters that are meaningless to the hacker.
In the future, researchers led by Larisa Cherkesova, a professor at the Department of Cybersecurity for Information Systems, plan to study the quantum memory of photons and apply this effect to create encryption with a higher level of protection.
Don State Technical University is a Priority-2030 Program participant.
