Who says electronics is a dead field...
Encryption is a thing of the past
C'mon feel the noise
By Nick Farrell: Monday 28 May 2007, 09:00
A BOFFIN in the former Spanish colony of Texas has come up with a simple way of making electronic messages that are impossible to crack.
According to New Scientist, Laszlo Kish at Texas A&M University in College Station has come up with a cunning plan that uses the thermal properties of a simple wire to create a secure communications channel which outperforms quantum cryptography keys. His invention uses thermal noise which is generated by the natural agitation of electrons within a conductor.
Kish and fellow boffins at the University of Szeged in Hungary say this noise can be used to securely pass information, or an encryption key, down any wire, including a telephone line or network cable.
The idea is based on using two resistors. One high resister sends a greater thermal noise and the other ends a low one. Half the time they produce either too much or too little noise on the line and will ignore any communication. The rest of the time they will produce a little bit of noise and send some real data. It takes an "educated eavesdropper" to even realise information is being sent when there seems to be just low-level noise on the line.
If hackers do realise they are listening to a message then they cannot tell what it is because it's impossible to tell whether a person has a high or low resistor turned on. Listening will alter the level of thermal noise so that the parties will know someone is trying to hear their conversation.
