The technology it has applied to is quantum cryptography, a drastic break from the conventional encryption systems around. The Chinese project in the city of Jinan has held lauded as a milestone by country’s media.
The pioneering scheme is also the piece of a bigger story: China is getting the lead in a technology in which the West has long remained reluctant to invest.
In the Jinan system, any 200 users of the military, government, banking and electricity sectors will be capable of sending messages safe in the information that only they are reading them.
China’s potential in quantum communication suggests the nation is catching huge strides improving applications that sway make the increasingly exposed internet more secure. Applications that other nations soon force find themselves buying from China.
So, what is this technology into which the country is issuing massive resources?
If you transmit any information you need to keep protected from eavesdroppers, common encryption runs by hiding the key required to read the information in a very complex mathematical problem.
But what is “hard” in terms of maths? It means you ought to think very fast to figure it out as you try countless organizations of long, numeric keys. In 2017, that suggests you need to use a very powerful computer.
Steady increases in processor power mean that the number-based keys have to be increased periodically. Encryption has a shallow life and is rapidly growing more vulnerable.
There are also concerns that the growth of quantum computers, which definitely represent a huge step difference in number crunching ability, will render much of modern encryption software vulnerable.
Quantum interface works differently:
- If you want to transfer your secure message, you head separately send a key inserted in particles of light
- Only when do you transfer your encrypted message and the recipient will be able to understand it with the help of the key sent beforehand
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