"China will soon have the world's most secure major computer network, making communications between Beijing and Shanghai impenetrable to hackers and giving it a decisive edge in its quiet cyberwar with the United States. " http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...computer-network-impenetrable-to-hackers.html
The US and the allies should be more decisive than this move by China. It has been proven that time and again the Chinese has been responsible for a lot of hacking incidences like that of NASA and the F-35...
Whenever I hear phrases like "impenetrable", "secure" (and worse NSA-proof), or "safe" - I have a wry laugh. We're talking people and money here! What ~ Snipped as per TOS ~ is the extent to which our security services have deliberately weakened our defences, and you'd have thought we had more to lose.
As soon as they say "impenetrable to hackers" someone will take that as a challenge and show them how wrong they are. Unless this network and every device on it: 1, has no connection to the "normal" web 2, has every device hardened against air-gap jumping malware 3, has no usable USB ports, serial,or firewire connections 4, has no CD or floppy drives 5, patrol and/or monitor every inch of the cable 6, have real time surveillance on everyone with more than "user mode" access Fail on any of these and it's hackable.
I believe that "impenetrable" was meant just for MITM attacks. I don't think they are saying all machines on network will stay clean. They are just saying that no one will be able to listen to communications between computers on this network, using MITM attack.
The problem being all the relays on the way, each one of which breaks the coherence, and is a risk. Rather more widely than that, the problem has ever been that the crypto (including conventional) is fairly good, and it's the clients, software, and the people who are the big risks.
That Stuxnet was indeed a piece of work. But it seems whoever is the more aggressive he gains the momentum. I remember an old BBC documentary about hacking and it is like what deBoetie says "people and money". The promise of something better whatever it maybe for gratification or whatever get's the job done...until the next episode of hacking..and then it continues.
Quantum crypto is nothing new. The U.S. and Europe have been tinkering with it for years (both private companies and certainly the governments). QKD is no different from any classical system in that the biggest flaw is not the math (or physics) but the implementation. Implementing QKD in a secure way has proven to be very hard and various systems have already been broken. A quote from a physicist working on such systems:
From what I understand Stuxnet was released into the wild to check the world wide susceptibility of utility companies for malware.
