From: InfoSec News (alertsinfosecnews.org)
Date: Tue May 18 2010 - 00:37:39 CDT

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http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25189/

Technology Review
May 17, 2010

Physicists have mounted the first successful attack of its kind on a
commercial quantum cryptography system.

When it comes to secure messaging, nothing beats quantum cryptography, a
method that offers perfect security. Messages sent in this way can never
be cracked by an eavesdropper, no matter how powerful.

At least, that's the theory. Today, Feihu Xu, Bing Qi and Hoi-Kwong Lo
at the University of Toronto in Canada say they have broken a commercial
quantum cryptography system made by the Geneva-based quantum technology
startup ID Quantique, the first successful attack of its kind on a
commercially-available system.

Here's how they did it. Any proof that quantum cryptography is perfect
relies on assumptions that don't always hold true in the real world.
Identify one of these weaknesses and you've found a loophole that can be
exploited to hack in to such a system.

[...]

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