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Springer eBooks

Quantum Cryptography

ARTUR K. EKERT, Nicolas Gisin, B. Hüttner, Hitoshi Inamori, Harald Weinfurter

Published Jan 1, 2000• 123 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Human desire to communicate secretly is at least as old as writing itself and goes back to the beginnings of our civilisation. Methods of secret communication were developed by many ancient societies, including those of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China, but details regarding the origins of cryptology l remain unknown [29]. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

DOI
10.1007/978-3-662-04209-0_2

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Abstract Human desire to communicate secretly is at least as old as writing itself and goes back to the beginnings of our civilisation. Methods of secret communication were developed by many ancient societies, including those of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China, but details regarding the origins of cryptology remain unknown (Kahn 1967). We know that it was the Spartans, the most warlike of the Greeks, who pioneered military cryptography in Europe. Around 400 BC they employed a device known as a scytale. The device, used for communication between military commanders, consisted of a tapered baton around which was wrapped a spiral strip of parchment or leather containing the message. Words were then written lengthwise along the baton, one letter on each revolution of the strip. When unwrapped, the letters of the message appeared scrambled and the parchment was sent on its way. The receiver wrapped the parchment around another baton of the same shape and the original message reappeared.

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The word cryptography originates from two Greek words: kryptos (secret) and graphein (writing). Thus cryptography is the art of communicating a message in secret manner or in other words, it is the art of rendering a message unintelligible to any unauthorized party. Its history is very old and exciting. From the beginning of human civilization there was a need to hide information from unauthorized people. This need gave birth to cryptography. Initial cryptographic protocols were very simple. With time they have become much more sophisticated and secure. However, all the classical cryptographic protocols developed so far are secure under some assumptions. In contrast, the protocols of quantum cryptography are unconditionally secure. This particular aspect of quantum cryptography makes it very interesting. This chapter aims to provide a flavor of the intrinsic beauty of various aspects of secure quantum communication. Before we start a journey into the fascinating world of secure quantum communication, it would be apt to become familiar with the jargon used in this field and also with some interesting protocols of classical cryptography. Let us first do that.

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Human desire to communicate secretly is at least as old as writing itself and goes back to the beginnings of our civilisation. Methods of secret communication were developed by many ancient societies, including those of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China, but details regarding the origins of cryptology l remain unknown [29]. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Abstract Human desire to communicate secretly is at least as old as writing itself and goes back to the beginnings of our civilisation. Methods of secret communication were developed by many ancient societies, including those of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China, but details regarding the origins of cryptology remain unknown (Kahn 1967). We know that it was the Spartans, the most warlike of the Greeks, who pioneered military cryptography in Europe. Around 400 BC they employed a device known as a scytale. The device, used for communication between military commanders, consisted of a tapered baton around which was wrapped a spiral strip of parchment or leather containing the message. Words were then written lengthwise along the baton, one letter on each revolution of the strip. When unwrapped, the letters of the message appeared scrambled and the parchment was sent on its way. The receiver wrapped the parchment around another baton of the same shape and the original message reappeared.
The word cryptography originates from two Greek words: kryptos (secret) and graphein (writing). Thus cryptography is the art of communicating a message in secret manner or in other words, it is the art of rendering a message unintelligible to any unauthorized party. Its history is very old and exciting. From the beginning of human civilization there was a need to hide information from unauthorized people. This need gave birth to cryptography. Initial cryptographic protocols were very simple. With time they have become much more sophisticated and secure. However, all the classical cryptographic protocols developed so far are secure under some assumptions. In contrast, the protocols of quantum cryptography are unconditionally secure. This particular aspect of quantum cryptography makes it very interesting. This chapter aims to provide a flavor of the intrinsic beauty of various aspects of secure quantum communication. Before we start a journey into the fascinating world of secure quantum communication, it would be apt to become familiar with the jargon used in this field and also with some interesting protocols of classical cryptography. Let us first do that.
The practical implementation of quantum information technologies requires, for the most part, highly advanced and currently experimental procedures. One exception is quantum cryptography, or quantum key distribution, which has been successfully demonstrated in many laboratories and has reached an advanced level of development. It will probably become the first commercial application of quantum information. In quantum key distribution, Alice and Bob exploit a quantum channel to create a secret shared key comprising a random string of binary digits. This key can then be used to protect a subsequent communication between them. The principal idea is that the secrecy of the key distribution is ensured by the laws of quantum physics. Proving security for practical communication systems is a challenging problem and requires techniques that are beyond the scope of this book. At a fundamental level, however, the ideas are simple and may readily be understood with the knowledge we have already acquired. Quantum cryptography is the latest idea in the long history of secure (and not so secure) communications and, if it is to develop, it will have to compete with existing technologies. For this reason we begin with a brief survey of the history and current state of the art in secure communications before turning to the possibilities offered by quantum communications. The history of cryptography is a long and fascinating one. As a consequence of the success or, more spectacularly, the failure of ciphers, wars have been fought, battles decided, kingdoms won, and heads lost. In the information age, ciphers and cryptosystems have become part of everyday life; we use them to protect our computers, to shop over the Internet, and to access our money via an ATM (automated teller machine). One of the oldest and simplest of all ciphers is the transposition or Caesarean cipher (attributed to Julius Caesar), in which the letters are shifted by a known (and secret) number of places in the alphabet. If the shift is 1, for example, then A is enciphered as B, B→C, · · ·, Y→Z, Z→A. A shift of five places leads us to make the replacements A→F, B→G, · · ·, Y→D, Z→E.