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Writer's pictureAshna Jain

Quantum Internet

Updated: Jan 21, 2021

Unhackable internet sounds like an excellent idea. But anyone who's been ripped off by a fraudulent website or had their password stolen online knows that the internet is very much hackable today. However physicists have figured out how to leverage the quantum properties of entanglement and superposition so that data can be sent in a way that is not just difficult but actually impossible to hack. Unhackable internet introduces a plethora of possibilities, not only can we say goodbye to cybercrime and laggy internet but we can also usher in a new era of ultrafast, ultrasecure data transmission.


Recently, scientists have been learning how to transmit pairs of photons across fiber-optic cables so that the encoded information is completely secure. The Delft network will be the first to transmit information between cities using quantum techniques from end to end. The technology relies on a quantum properties of atomic particles called entanglement and superposition. Entangled photons can’t be read without corrupting their content. Entangled particles are difficult to create and transmit over long distances but a team of scientists have managed to send them over 1.5 kilometers, and are hoping to set up a quantum link between Delft and the Hague by the end of the year. However creating a similar unbroken connection over longer distances will require quantum repeaters that extend the network. These are still under development.


Besides being used to send unhackable messages, a quantum internet can also improve the accuracy of GPS and enable cloud-based quantum computing. While computers have remained relatively unchanged, fibre optic internet has greatly improved our connection speed capacity. A quantum internet could rapidly increase speeds upto far more than even fibre optic internet, and when coupled with the obvious benefits the tightened security bring, unhackable internet will certainly be a major breakthrough, transforming the future completely.


What will a world with unhackable internet look like? Firstly, cybercrimes and cyberterrorism will fall greatly. Although schemes like phishing and cyberstalking will persist, more serious crimes like intercepting emails and bank transfers, penetrating government databases, or hacking into airlines will become impossible. With a safer internet, governments and firms can embark on ambitious projects like connecting pacemakers to the internet or building satellites that can regulate the weather without worrying that these technologies will be hacked to create a Black Hat-like armageddon.


To summarize, an unhackable internet will give us a faster, safer internet experience. The fact that we can use quantum entanglement and quantum superposition to manipulate individual photons and securely transfer data across the planet is a testament to how powerful quantum technology can be. Researchers are also developing sophisticated techniques like quantum simulation and quantum annealing that will help us construct quantum computers to complement the unhackable quantum internet. It's safe to say that unhackable internet and quantum computers are the future.


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saarjun
Nov 25, 2020

Interesting article! A major application of quantum entanglement to communications is probably as TRNG for the generation of one-time pads, which will revolutionize information-theoretically secure encryption (currently fairly impractical for most purposes).


However, entanglement can not be used to *transmit* information - changing one particle simply breaks the entanglement.[1][2]


This means that the impact on interceptibility of transmissions may not be too high. While some modern hacking is in the form of MITM (man in the middle) attacks as described, most of it uses vulnerabilities in websites and applications to gain unauthorized privileges - a problem that quantum entanglement can not solve. (Also, social engineering - it's how the Twitter hack was probably conducted!)


And, as you said, phishing and…


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