government approval sought for quantum encrypt

From the IT WIRE website - this may be of interest to the diehard SEN supporters.

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Government approval sought for quantum encryption
by Stephen Withers
Friday, 14 March 2008
Page 1 of 3
The makers of a network security device that uses quantum cryptography have an ingenious plan to gain government approval despite the absence of standards specific to the technology.
Senetas, the Australian developer of the CypherNet Cerberis encryption device, has a partnership with quantum cryptography leader id Quantique. The two companies hope to gain early accreditation for Cerberis from Australia's Defence Signals Directorate (DSD).

Cerberis performs wire-speed layer 2 AES encryption for Gigabit Ethernet, SONET/SDH (up to 10Gbps) and ATM (up to 622Mbps) links, using quantum key distribution.

"It's [quantum cryptography] so new, there are no standards or defined ways of doing the certification," said id Quantique CEO Grégoire Ribordy. The plan is to use a dual-key system combining classical and quantum encryption in such a way that the result can be shown to be "at least as strong as the classical key".

He described this approach as "a fast bypass to accreditation."

Senetas CEO John DuBois said the company's existing products are already certified to FIPS 142-3 and EAL 4+, and only a minor change to Cerberis would be required with this approach. It then "becomes the only quantum encryption device on the planet with government accreditation," he explained.

Several governments recognise each others' security accreditations, opening the door to sales in various countries.

According to Ribordy, formal proofs of quantum cryptography exist, but the problem is showing that a specific implementation matches the theory. There is "a lot of work to do in the next few years" to achieve that, but "people have to trust us at this stage."
According to a Senetas spokesperson, criminal elements are known to be warehousing stolen encrypted data in anticipation of the arrival of technology that will allow its decryption while the data still has value.

"There's a lack of acceptance that these things happen because it looks like something from the movies," said DuBois.

Furthermore 'man in the middle' attacks (where a communications link is interrupted then restored with the intruder acting as an intermediary unknown to the two parties) have featured in "more than three cases" in Australia during the last eight months where banks and their customers have lost amounts in the hundreds of millions of dollars, he said.

Quantum cryptography is by its nature immune from such attacks as any attempt to observe the key changes it, and is available from Senetas for as little as $10,000 per endpoint plus approximately $60,000 for the quantum unit itself (only one is required per network),

The first real-world use of quantum encryption (which used Senetas and id Quantique products) was to protect online voting in Switzerland last October.

According to Ribordy, "the sales cycle is quite long" for this type of product, with potential customers usually conducting tests before adding the devices to the following year's budget. Banks and industries concerned about protecting their intellectual property are expected to be among the first customers, with interest being shown in southeast Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe.
Resistance in other markets is sometimes partly due to nationalistic buying policies in the government and military sectors, he suggested, and because cryptography has previously been the province of mathematicians, whereas a background in physics is needed to fully understand quantum encryption.
n related news, Senetas is preparing to introduce new encryption devices for Fibre Channel and 10Gbps Ethernet, plus a switchable layer 2/layer 3 device for Gigabit Ethernet or 600-800Mbps IPsec links.

"All our products are QKD [quantum key distribution] enabled" ready for use with a id Quantique QKD device said DuBois."

Lets hope this kicks the SP along .... Cheers Salsa