HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

dwnw

69 karma · joined November 7, 2024

submissionscomments
dwnw··on A rudimentary quantum network link between Dutch cities
Lots of handwaving there. Particularly with "and I can (locally) do stuff"

Good luck with all of that.

dwnw··on A rudimentary quantum network link between Dutch cities
Amplification would absorb one photon and replace it with one or more new photons. Definitely not quantum.

Personally, I always wonder why point-to-point connections are called "networks". The information is not quantum at any node, even if there are multiple nodes in a system.

Then there's "quantum internet", which makes no sense at all. What are we going to do, run direct fiber from every computer to every other computer directly? You can't hop safely or anything. Don't get me started on the total bullshit that is the "quantum repeater", now we need "quantum switch" too?

We call serial port connections things like "link", "connection", etc. We typically don't call them networks until we start linking them all together with simple routing logic that doesn't inherently require access to all the unencrypted information the packets contain and such.

To me these are all just signs that the whole scheme is/was and will forever be mostly crankery.

Quantum networking is an oxymoron. It doesn't allow end-to-end encryption and in exchange gives back extremely fragile single link security properties.

dwnw··on A rudimentary quantum network link between Dutch cities
To disperse some of the hype here around using this for "uncrackable" key exchange: QKD has been a product of choice for cybersecurity conmen for decades.

https://www.nsa.gov/Cybersecurity/Quantum-Key-Distribution-Q...

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/whitepaper/quantum-security-technolo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil_(cryptography)

Stick with TLS. If you really think quantum computers are a threat to anything, use a hybrid-PQC key exchange.

My honest professional opinion is a cryptographically-relevant quantum computer will never exist, making classic cryptography superior in every case.

← PreviousPage 2 of 2