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BBN Tech Unveils World's First Quantum Cryptography Network
SourceBBN Technologies announced that it has built the world's first
quantum cryptography network and is now operating it continuously beneath the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Today the DARPA Quantum Network links BBN's campus to Harvard University; soon it will stretch across town to include Boston University as a third link. The Harvard University Applied Physics Department and the Boston University Photonics Center have worked in close collaboration with BBN to build the network under Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) sponsorship.
Information traveling over open networks such as the Internet is often encrypted to prevent unauthorized eavesdropping. Currently, complex mathematical algorithms are the most common method used to scramble (encrypt) and de-scramble (decrypt) messages that require secure transmission. Although this method can provide high levels of security, it is not infallible. In contrast, the DARPA Quantum Network introduces extremely high levels of security for Internet-based communications systems by encrypting and decrypting messages with keys created by quantum cryptography.
Quantum cryptography, invented by Charles Bennett and Giles Brassard in the 1980s, prepares and transmits single photons of light, through either fiber optic cable or the atmosphere, to distribute cryptographic keys that are used to encrypt and decrypt messages. This method of securing information is radically different from methods based on mathematical complexity, relying instead on fundamental physical laws. Because very small (quantum) particles are changed by any observation or measurement, eavesdropping on a quantum cryptography system is always detectable.
The DARPA Quantum Network has improved on these techniques to create a highly robust, six-node network that is both extremely secure and 100% compatible with today's Internet technology. Patent-pending BBN protocols pave the way for robust quantum networks on a larger scale by providing "any to any" networking of quantum cryptography through a mesh of passive optical switches and cryptographic key relays.
"People think of quantum cryptography as a distant possibility," said Chip Elliott, a Principal Scientist at BBN and leader of its quantum engineering team, "but the DARPA Quantum Network is up and running today underneath Cambridge. BBN has built a set of high-speed, full-featured quantum cryptography systems and has woven them together into an extremely secure network."
"This kind of breakthrough is the essence of BBN," said Tad Elmer, president and CEO of BBN. "We were ahead of the technology curve with the ARPANET and the first router, and our quantum network exemplifies the same kind of forward thinking and innovation that has made BBN a technology leader for over 50 years."