Perfect secrecy cryptography via mixing of chaotic waves in irreversible time-varying silicon chips.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31862881.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-13740-y and PMC identifier 6925125.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Protecting confidential data is a major worldwide challenge. Classical cryptography is fast and scalable, but is broken by quantum algorithms. Quantum cryptography is unclonable, but requires quantum installations that are more expensive, slower, and less scalable than classical optical networks. Here we show a perfect secrecy cryptography in classical optical channels. The system exploits correlated chaotic wavepackets, which are mixed in inexpensive and CMOS compatible silicon chips. The chips can generate 0.1 Tbit of different keys for every mm of length of the input channel, and require the transmission of an amount of data that can be as small as 1/1000 of the message's length. We discuss the security of this protocol for an attacker with unlimited technological power, and who can access the system copying any of its part, including the chips. The second law of thermodynamics and the exponential sensitivity of chaos unconditionally protect this scheme against any possible attack.