Category: Scientific & Academic

I know, this is not about networking but I received few great feedbacks to my posts about the matter so I decided to share with you the materials I used to write it. It’s not about networking, but it is about everything.

QUANTA?!

I was writing about quantum cryptography and quantum key distribution process few months ago (which are network related). When I started to write those articles I was not aware that it will take me more that two months to write something close to understandable about quantum world. As it came out, like many times before, I was in unknown unknowns with that part of physics. I needed to start from scratch and learn some basics about quantum physics so I could understand and finally write about the application of quantum theory to computer network encryption process.

I went through few very interesting and not to extensive books and articles which helped me to get the basic info about quantum physics. Quantum physics basically describes how everything in the universe works starting from small to huge things and stuff that can not be described as things like different energy states etc. Things work differently if you zoom inside atoms and the way stuff is working down there will blow your mind.

Computer networks are probably the best example of graphs these days. I started therefore to consider graph database as an excellent tool for storing experimental results of my networking complexity analysis method. It’s a project that I’m doing (starting to do) in which I will try to create a better method of computer network complexity audit by combining few of already existing methods and by additionally enhancing some of their algorithms to get more precise results out of the whole thing.

Graph: Two nodes (vertices) connected with relation (edge)

The idea is that most of network complexity measurement mechanism rely strongly on graph theory in which most metrics for measuring network/graph complexity is related to connectivity, node distance, and similar graph characteristics but with no particular way of measuring implementation complexity nor operation complexity of resulting network. Furthermore, existing methods do not contain a way to evaluate network system from economic perspective in any way, which would greatly increase the use cases for this new method, specifically in planing and designing phases.

QKD – Quantum key distribution is the magic part of quantum cryptography. Every other part of this new cryptography mechanism remains the same as in standard cryptography techniques currently used.

By using quantum particles which behave under rules of quantum mechanics, keys can be generated and distributed to receiver side in completely safe way. Quantum mechanics principle, which describes the base rule protecting the exchange of keys, is Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle states that it is impossible to measure both speed and current position of quantum particles at the same time. It furthermore states that the state of observed particle will change if and when measured. This fairly negative axiom which says that measurement couldn’t be done without perturbing the system is used in positive way by quantum key distribution.

Quantum cryptography is a new technique of securing computer network communication channel. Existing standard crypto systems are using advanced algorithms to create key pairs which are extremely hard to inverse engineer. Quantum cryptography avoids any mathematical algorithm and uses principles of quantum physics.

Quantum crypto implements a new technique of generating and exchanging crypto keys which makes it impossible for third party entities to get those keys by snooping or to create man in the middle by snooping and sending copies of original key. Keys generated in this way will automatically destroy themselves if read by third-party interferer.

When generated between two sides, using quantum key distribution, secret keys will be used with standard and well known symmetric encryption. The key generation process is the only part which uses quantum principles to work, from there, using this “hyper-secure key” already existing symmetric encryption will be used to encrypt and decrypt data, which will be sent over standard, currently available, optic data networks.

If you want to send or store data and be sure it is safe from being intercepted, you will use Cryptography. Cryptography uses chipper as mathematical virtual lock to make data scrambled so that is not understandable if intercepted by unauthorized third parties.

There are different cryptography techniques, some of them are: encryption, hashing, and steganography.

Cryptography can be differentiated by usage of different key types:

• Symmetric Key Encryption
• Asymmetric Key Encryption

Symmetric Key Encryption is sometimes known as Secret Key Cryptography. Main characteristic of this type of cryptography is the same key usage in encryption and decryption of transferred data. Every change in the secret key will make data decryption impossible.

Asymmetric Key Encryption is known as Public Key Cryptography technique. Main characteristic of this type of cryptography is usage of two sets of keys which are generated for the process. One key is public and other is private. Public key encrypts the data. We can only decrypt that data using appropriate private key. The best part of asymmetric cryptography is that is giving us a technique to share encrypted data and enable the receiver to decrypt that data without sending the decryption key across unsecured network.