Quantum Teleportation | Hacking

Chinese Quantum Satellite Sends First ‘Unhackable’ Data to Earth

Wednesday, August 09, 2017 Wang Wei

In what appears to be the world's first quantum satellite transmission, China has successfully sent an "unbreakable" code over a long distance from an orbiting satellite to the Earth, achieving a milestone in the next generation encryption based on "quantum cryptography."

In August last year, China launched the world's first quantum communication satellite into the Earth’s orbit aboard a Long March-2D rocket to test the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics at space.

Dubbed Quantum Science Satellite, nicknamed Micius or Mozi (Chinese: 墨子), the satellite was designed to establish a 'Hack-Proof' communications system in this age of global surveillance by transmitting unbreakable encryption keys from space to the ground.

Now, it has been reported that using this satellite, the Chinese scientists at the Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QUESS) project were able to send secret "quantum key distribution" (QKD) data by beaming photons from the space to the ground stations over longer distances than ever before.

The Chinese scientists successfully sent quantum keys over a distance of 1,200 Km (745 miles) from space to Earth at a transmission rate up to 20 of magnitudes more efficient than that expected using an optical fibre of the same length, lead scientist Pan Jianwei told the official Xinhua news agency.

"That, for instance, can meet the demand of making an absolute safe phone call or transmitting a large amount of bank data," Jianwei said.

The Quantum Science Satellite could become the world's first transcontinental quantum key distribution network of its kind and China hopes to erect a global quantum cryptography-based communications network in 2030.

Theoretically, the use quantum cryptography for encryption is secure against any interception, as the information is encoded in a quantum particle in a way that it'll be destroyed as soon as the system detects any intrusion attempts.

"Satellite-based quantum key distribution can be linked to metropolitan quantum networks where fibres are sufficient and convenient to connect numerous users within a city over 100 km," Jianwei said.

"We can thus envision a space-ground integrated quantum network, enabling quantum cryptography- most likely the first commercial application of quantum information- useful at a global scale."

China has largely been ambitious to realise the importance of Quantum technology that's believed to be a new era of faster and more powerful super computers.

From past two decades, Quantum technology has been a top strategic focus in China's 5-year economic development plan. While the U.S. invested about $200 Million a year in quantum research, China spent $101 Billion in quantum physics in 2015.

THN Weekly Roundup — 11 Most Important Hacking News Stories

Monday, October 05, 2015 Swati Khandelwal

We are back with our last week’s top cyber security threats and challenges, just in case you missed any of them (ICYMI).

THN Weekly Round Up is The Hacker News efforts to help you provide all important stories of last week in one shot.

We recommend you read the full story (just click ‘Read More’ because there’s some valuable advice in there as well).

Here's the list:

1. Quantum Teleportation — Scientists Teleported Quantum Data over 60 Miles

While the world is battling between Quantum computers and Encryption, the NIST Scientists have set a new record in the field of "Quantum Teleportation"...

…by successfully Teleporting a small amount of data (qubit) inside light particles over a distance of 60 Miles (100 km) through a network of optical fiber – the record which is four times faster than previous one.

To know how the Quantum Teleportation works and how the researchers able to reach this record, Read More…

2. Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm is a Free Man Again

Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, also known as Anakata, has been released from a Sweden prison following 3 years behind bars for copyright and hacking offenses in both Sweden and Denmark.

The Pirate Bay is one of the world's most popular file-sharing websites predominantly used to share copyrighted material, like pirated software, pirated video files, and other stuff, free of charge.

For more information on Svartholm his release, Read More…

3. Microsoft Responds by Not Addressing Windows 10 Spying

Microsoft finally responded to the growing privacy concerns around its newest operating system to regain the trust of users who are concerned about their online privacy related to Windows 10, But…

The company did admit that the operating system does regularly phone home by default.

According to the company, Windows 10 doesn't collect two types of data – communications (including e-mail and Skype) and File Contents – but the company collects everything else from Cortana and Bing searches to store purchases.

For detailed information, Read More…

4. Microsoft's Love for Open Source

Last month, Microsoft surprised us by announcing that it has built a Linux kernel-based operating system Azure Cloud Switch (ACS) for developing software products for Network Devices.

Once again the company surprised us by choosing Ubuntu as the operating system for their Cloud-based Big Data services.

For in-depth information on "Azure HDInsight" for Linux users, Read More…

5. Unpatched WinRAR Flaw Affects 500 Million Users

A Very Big Number Indeed! A highly critical unpatched Zero-day vulnerability discovered in the latest version of WinRAR affected hundreds of Millions of its users worldwide.

The remote code execution vulnerability in the stable version of WinRAR 5.21 for Windows computers can be used by any attacker to insert a malicious HTML code inside the "Text to display in SFX window" section when the user is creating a new SFX file.

To know more about the zero-day flaw in WinRAR, Read More…

6. TrueCrypt Encryption Software Affected by Two Critical Flaws

If you are among those privacy-conscious people who are still using 'no longer available' TrueCrypt Encryption Software, then it’s time for you to move on.

Despite going through audits, researchers have found two highly critical security vulnerabilities in TrueCrypt that could expose your data to hackers if exploited.

CVE-2015-7358: Allows attackers to gain access to a running process and get full administrative privileges.
CVE-2015-7359: Allows attackers to impersonate as an authenticated user.

For detailed information on both the vulnerabilities, Read More…

7. One Billion Android Users are at Risk of Stagefright Bug 2.0

Android users must pay attention to the newly discovered Stagefright Bug.

Yes, Android Stagefright bug is Back with a Bang. More than 1 Billion Android smartphone devices are vulnerable to hackers once again – Thanks to, not one, but two newly disclosed Android Stagefright vulnerabilities.

This time, the bug allows attackers to hack your Android smartphones just by tricking you into visiting a website that contains a malicious multimedia file, either MP3 or MP4.

For in-depth information on Android Stagefright Bug 2.0, Read More…

8. Amazon Employee bought 'Google.com' Just for $12

This was one of the last week's trending news. Amazon employee Sanmay Ved, who was an ex-Google employee, managed to buy the world's largest search engine website Google.com just for $12 from Google itself.

However, soon Ved received an order cancelation email and refund from Google Domains, but the experience of owning the search engine giant for one whole minute indeed sounds great.

For detail information and screenshots, he took while purchasing Google.com, Read More…

9. Data Breach Week

This week, we saw 3 high-profile data breaches, compromising personal and sensitive details of millions of people.

Telecommunication giant T-Mobile – Over 15 Million Users Affected
Crowdfunding website Patreon – Over 2.3 Million Users Affected
US brokerage firm Scottrade – Nearly 5 Million Users Affected

T-Mobile's credit application processor Experian was hacked, potentially exposing highly sensitive details of 15 Million users who applied for its service in the past two years.

In Patreon's case, hackers managed to steal almost 15 gigabytes' worth of data including names, shipping addresses and email addresses of 2.3 Million users, and then made it available to various online locations for anyone to download.

US brokerage firm Scottrade also suffered a massive data breach in which hackers managed to access one of its servers in late 2013 and early 2014, stealing names and street addresses for 4.6 million of their clients.

For in-depth information, Read More…

10. Design Flaws Make Drones Vulnerable to Cyber-Attacks

Researchers have discovered a method that can be used to hack and hijack Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), better known as DRONES.

HP Security Researcher Oleg Petrovsky discovered design flaws in the UAV systems that allowed him to capture, modify, and inject a data stream into a telemetry link connection over a serial port, as well as spoof the connection to the ground station to take complete control of Drone.

For detailed information, Read More…

11. AdBlock Extension has been Sold to an 'Unknown Buyer'

Yes, your favorite AdBlock browser extension that helps you block annoying online advertising has been sold – and more shockingly – to an unknown buyer.

What’s more bothering is that the 'Anonymous buyer' is turning ON the "Acceptable Ads" feature, which maintains a whitelist of advertisements that are not blocked by default.

This means that AdBlock will now let some advertisements through on by selected websites or by selected companies by default, if those companies pay for showing their ads – the concept entirely contradict the key feature of AdBlock, i.e. blocking ads.

For detailed information, Read More…

Quantum Teleportation — Scientists Teleported Quantum Data over 60 Miles

Monday, September 28, 2015 Khyati Jain

We are just one step closer to creating a Harry Potter or ‘Star Trek’-style Transporter.

However, When we talk about Teleportation, we don't typically mean Teleporting any matter from one place to another as in the Science-fiction Movies.

Rather, Teleportation involves capturing the essential information about something — its "quantum state", to recreate it exactly someplace else.

A month ago, The Hacker News had reported the battle between Quantum computers and Encryption.

Now, with the development of technology, the NIST Scientists have set a new record in the field of “Quantum Teleportation”, as they successfully Teleported a small amount of data (called ‘qubit’) inside light particles over a distance of 60 miles (100 km) through a network of optical fiber.

Teleportation enables transfer of ‘Quantum state’ of a Photon to another Photon in the same state residing remotely at a far-off distance.

This Record being farthest than the previous record, which was less than four times the current one.

Also Read: Entangled Photons on Silicon Chip: Secure Communications & Ultrafast Computers

"We report on Quantum teleportation over optical fiber using four high-detection-efficiency superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs)," the researchers said in their study.

These Single-Photon Detectors are made possible with advanced research and development by a team of researchers at NIST.

“These SNSPDs make it possible to perform highly efficient multifold photon measurements, allowing us to confirm that the quantum states of input photons were successfully teleported over 100 km of fiber with an average fidelity of 83.7 2.0%”, said the team.

To know how the Quantum Teleportation works, see the image below:

With the full-fledged establishment of the Quantum computers, the future of Cyber security lies within.

Teleportation is a unique phenomenon in both quantum computers and quantum communication. Moreover, the technology overpowering the current computers and communication; following are considered as the achievements by NIST: