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06 September 2021 | Alan Burkitt-Gray

Traditional PKI methods of encrypting data are about to fall to the onslaught of quantum computing. Arqit, a start-up led by David Williams thinks it has a quantum-based solution, he tells Alan Burkitt-Gray

A start-up company that is expected to be valued at US$1.4 billion by the end of August is launching its quantum-based telecoms encryption service in the middle of July. Arqit, founded by satellite entrepreneur David Williams, is launching QuantumCloud, a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) for telecoms, including consumer, industrial and defence internet of things (IoT), he tells me.

Early customers, including BT and other telcos that he doesnt want to name, have already signed contracts and used the cyber security software, but Arqit is likely to be thrust into greater prominence imminently, when a Nasdaq-listed special purpose acquisition company (Spac) buys it in a deal that will value it at $1.4 billion.

Williams and a small number of co-founders will own 45%, he tells me a stake that will be worth $630 million to him and his colleagues.

A former banker, Williams, who is now chairman of Arqit, was founder and CEO of Avanti, a UK-based company that runs a fleet of geostationary satellites called Hylas with government, military and commercial customers. He left Avanti in August 2017 and a month later set up Arqit.

Being the founder of two satellite companies is a pretty remarkable record after seven years working for three banks following a degree in economics and politics. (He also notes that he was the yard-of-ale champion at the University of Leeds.)

However, his first start-up, Avanti Communications, has not fared well over the past year, long after Williamss departure. In February 2021 its existing junior lenders injected $30 million of new capital, and its so-called super senior facility, which was due for repayment in February, was extended, but only to the end of January 2022.

Existential threat

But Arqit has moved into a completely different market, addressing something the company calls an existential threat to the hyperconnected world. Why? The legacy encryption that we all use, designed in the 1980s, has done a great job but is now failing us, says Arqit on its website. It was never intended for use in our hyper-connected world. The breaches caused are seen around us daily.

At the same time, there is a bigger problem. Quantum computing now poses an existential threat to cyber security for everyone. As a result, the world must begin a global upgrade cycle to replace all encryption technologies, an upgrade unlike anything we have seen before, says the company.

Dont bother patching and mending, says Arqit. Dont take risks with incremental improvements to public key encryption which is no longer fit for purpose.

Encryption using public key infrastructure (PKI) emerged from the communications intelligence community around 1971 in work by James Ellis at the UKs Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and was then developed further in 1976 through work in the US and Israel by Whit Diffie and Martin Hellman and separately by Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman (known, from their initials, as RSA).

So, the idea is virtually half a century old. But in that time, certainly in the past decade, it has done us well. If the URL of a website starts https://, you know its encrypted to those 1970s standards. It means we are reasonably confident we can type our credit card details into a hotel, theatre, travel or shopping site. Messaging apps such as Signal and WhatsApp use encryption based on these PKI principles.

No one trusts PKI

However, no one trusts PKI any more, says Williams. The safest way of delivering keys to a battlefield is now to put them on a dongle and fly them in by helicopter.

At the heart of the problem is the fact that quantum computers are coming, and quantum computers are fast. Diffie and Hellman, and the RSA trio, calculated that if it took weeks or months to decrypt a message, PKI was secure. Breaking the code would be computationally infeasible, to use the term the crypto community likes.

By perhaps as soon as next year, quantum computers will be able to work so fast that they will have decrypted the text in a usable period of time. The challenge will no longer be computationally infeasible. Someone intercepting a transaction could find your credit card details within an hour or so, and use them. So, thats why there is pressure to upgrade to a new system of key exchange, a replacement for PKI.

However, the security people have something more to worry about. Many suspect that for years governments and other organisations have been squirrelling away in their vaults traffic that is encrypted to current standards, knowing that, any time soon, they will be able to crack it.

Think of all those politicians, on all sides of the global political divides, who have been conspiring via WhatsApp. Think of all those whistleblowers who have leaked information to law enforcement authorities or journalists via Signal. Think of all those criminal organisations that have been using Telegram for their plans.

Lemon juice and milk

Thats why PKI, the current crypto infrastructure, is facing what Arqit calls an existential threat. Pretty soon, it will be as outmoded as writing Xf buubdl bu ebxo upnpsspx* in lemon juice or milk and sending it via carrier pigeon. Dont bother with minor fixes, says Arqit. Its wrong to patch and mend, or to take risks.

The future lies in symmetric keys, with a new way of distributing them. Symmetric keys are provably secure against any attack, including quantum computing, says the company.

The problem is that, until now, there has been no safe way to distribute them. Arqit says that it offers a method to create those keys at scale, securely, at any kind of endpoint device. We have invented a method of creating unbreakable encryption keys locally, both at the edge and in the cloud, says Williams.

Arqit has a solution. Its called Arq19, pretty much for the same reason Covid-19 has that suffix: 2019 was our Eureka moment, he smiles.

These are systems he calls global and trustless, a confusing term. It seems to mean you cant trust it, but what Williams and Arqit mean is that you dont have to trust it, as keys will never be stored in any system, so they cannot be stolen, but they can be put on devices within less than half a second to enable a high level of security.

We create hardware storage modules in a number of places he says London, New York, Sydney, for example. But those arent the keys. They are clues, a process involving shared secrets to create brand-new symmetrical encryption keys. No, I dont understand either; but how many people in 1936 understood Turings famous paper, On Computable Numbers, which started the computer revolution? (Turing went on to work during World War Two at GCHQs predecessor at Bletchley Park, in what is now the English city of Milton Keynes.)

Arqit can deliver its keys in unlimited group sizes, says Williams. The traditional PKI approach is for two-way communications Alice and Bob, in the crypto communitys terminology.

But what Williams is looking for is a system that will work with Alice, Bob, Catherine, Dave, Eve and a whole telephone directory.

For example, says Williams, they can deliver keys to international telecoms networks, and we can change the key every second if we want. He says that will result in ultra-secure software defined networks (SDNs).

We can deliver quantum keys in a manner thats global and trustless, says Williams. The company will use a small fleet of satellites, weighing 300kg each, that is being built by QinetiQ, a company formed 20 years ago by the privatisation of part of the UK governments Defence Evaluation and Research Agency.

BT has an exclusive deal to distribute Arqits QuantumCloud services in the UK, and the Japanese firm Sumitomo has a deal as the first big international customer, says Williams.

It is working with telcos to encrypt traffic on Japanese fibre cables, he adds.

These are contracts with distributors that have been signed, but the companys first contract with a corporate user went live in June, he says, although he will not name the partner, except that it is a big global corporation. It is an enterprise customer and is not BT.

The eventual market will include the internet of things (IoT) and connected cars, enterprise and connectivity, he said. Cost will be low, says Williams. Users will pay a tiny fraction of a dollar for each key created.

Heir to Turing

Williams has gathered around him a range of technical, crypto and management talent. CTO and co-founder with Williams is David Bestwick, who was also a co-founder and CTO of Avanti. Theres a chief cryptographer who was at GCHQ: think of David Shiu as the inheritor of the tradition founded by Turing 80 years ago.

There are other ex-GCHQ people, too, and a retired air vice-marshal and a former lieutenant general in the US Air Force. And more, including experts in telecoms, IT and a chief software engineer who was at McAfee. And a former head of operations at 10 Downing Street.

These people are well connected. Well see what they achieve.

Though, will we be able to find out, or will it all be encrypted?

*Xf buubdl bu ebxo upnpsspx means just We attack at dawn tomorrow, using the so-called Caesar cipher, as reputedly used by the Roman dictator

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Future in the cloud for encryption - Capacity Media

How can one predict a materials behavior on the molecular and atomic levels, at the shortest timescales? Whats the best way to design materials to make use of their quantum properties for electronics and information science?

These broad, difficult questions are the type of inquiries that UC Santa Barbara theorist Vojtech Vlcek and his lab will investigate as part of a select group of scientists chosen by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to develop new operating frameworks for some of the worlds most powerful computers. Vlcek will be leading one of five DOE-funded projects to the tune of $28 million overall that will focus on computational methods, algorithms and software to further chemical and materials research, specifically for simulating quantum phenomena and chemical reactions.

Its really exciting, said Vlcek, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and one of, if not the youngest researcher to lead such a major endeavor. We believe we will be for the first time able to not only really describe realistic systems, but also provide this whole framework for ultrafast and driven phenomena that will actually set the scene for future developments.

I congratulate Vojtech Vlcek on being selected for this prestigious grant, said Pierre Wiltzius, dean of mathematical, physical and life sciences at UC Santa Barbara. Its especially impressive and unusual for an assistant professor to lead this type of complex, multi-institution research project. Vojtech is in a league if his own, and I look forward to future insights that will come from the teams discoveries.

A Multilayer FrameworkAs part of the DOEs efforts toward clean energy technologies, scientists across the nation study matter and energy at their most fundamental levels. The goal is to design and discover new materials and processes that can generate, manipulate and store energy techniques that have applications in a wide variety of areas, including energy, environment and national security.

Uncovering these potentially beneficial phenomena and connecting them to the atoms they come from is hard work work that could be assisted with the use of the supercomputers that are housed in the DOEs national laboratories.

DOEs national labs are home to some of the worlds fastest supercomputers, and with more advanced software programs we can fully harness the power of these supercomputers to make breakthrough discoveries and solve the worlds hardest to crack problems, said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. These investments will help sustain U.S. leadership in science, accelerate basic energy and advance solutions to the nations clean energy priorities.

Among these hard-to-crack problems is the issue of many interacting particles. Interactions are more easily predicted in a system of a few atoms or molecules, or in very regular, periodic systems. But add more bodies or use more elaborate systems and the complexity skyrockets because the characteristics and behaviors of and interactions between every particle have to be accounted for. In some cases, their collective behaviors can produce interesting phenomena that cant be predicted from the behavior of individual particles.

People have been working with small molecules, or characterizing perfectly periodic systems, or looking at just a few atoms, Vlcek said, and more or less extending their dynamics to try to approximate the behaviors of larger, more complex systems.

This is not necessarily realistic, he continued. We want to simulate surfaces. We want to simulate systems that have large-scale periodicity. And in these cases you need to consider systems that are not on nanometer scales, but on the scale of thousands of atoms.

Add to that complexity non-equilibrium processes, which are the focus of Vlceks particular project. He will be leading an effort that involves an additional seven co-principal investigators from UC Berkeley, UCLA, Rutgers University, University of Michigan and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Essentially these systems are driven by some strong external stimuli, like from lasers or other driving fields, he said. These processes are relevant for many applications, such as electronics and quantum information sciences.

The goal, according to Vlcek, is to develop algorithms and software based on a multilayer framework with successive layers of embedding theories to capture non-equilibrium dynamics. The team, in partnership with two DOE-supported Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) Institutes at Lawrence Berkeley and Argonne National Laboratories, begins with the most fundamental assumptions of quantum theory. That foundation is followed by layers that incorporate novel numerical techniques and neural network approaches to take advantage of the intensive computing the supercomputers can perform.

We still stay with the first principles approach, but were making successive levels of approximations, Vlcek explained. And with this approach well be able to treat extremely large systems. Among the many advantages of the methodology will be the ability for the first time to describe experimental systems in real-time, as they are driven by external forces.

The outcome of the project will be bigger than the sum of its parts, said Vlcek. Not only will it provide a method of studying and designing a wide variety of present and future novel materials, the algorithms are also meant for future supercomputers.

One interesting outcome will be that we will also try to connect to future computational platforms, which could possibly be quantum computers, he said. So this framework will actually allow future research on present and future novel materials as well as new theoretical research.

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Many Bodies, Many Possibilities | The UCSB Current - The UCSB Current

Srivatsan Chakram

The Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center hosted by Fermilab is proud to announce the addition of a new contributing partner: Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

The SQMS Center was established in September 2020 as a National Quantum Information Science Research Center. It comprises a diverse group of collaborators from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds.

Following its inception, SQMS established a rigorous process to onboard new partner institutions into the collaboration. Rutgers-New Brunswick joins 19 other collaborating institutions, representing federal labs, academia and industry. To date, more than 275 members both national and international conduct center research activities.

Rutgers is extremely excited by this opportunity to collaborate with the efforts of SQMS. Quantum information science is a high-priority area for the university, said Robert Bartynski, chair of the department of physics and astronomy at Rutgers-New Brunswick.

Srivatsan Chakram, an assistant professor in the department of physics and astronomy at Rutgers-New Brunswick, will serve as one of the principal investigators in the SQMS technology thrust, specifically in the devices and materials focus areas. Having Professor Chakram as a principal investigator forms a natural bridge between the complementary expertise present at both organizations, said Bartynski.

Rutgers brings world-class expertise in the 3D superconducting quantum systems, said Alexander Romanenko, Fermilab chief technology officer and SQMS technology thrust leader. Professor Chakram is one of the world experts on the 3D superconducting qubit architecture and specifically on cavity-based quantum processors, where he performed some recent pioneering work.

A primary focus of the SQMS Center is the extension of the lifetime of qubits, the foundational element of quantum computing. Extending the lifetime, or coherence time, of qubits increases the amount of time that they can exist in a quantum state and hold quantum information.

Its great to be part of this collaboration, which I think will be very fruitful, said Chakram. Fermilab makes the best cavities in the world. The best cavities I have made can store single microwave photons for a few milliseconds. The cavities made at Fermilab have lifetimes approaching a second. Leveraging the extraordinary coherence of the Fermilab cavities should allow us to build better quantum processors. I have some expertise with designing and buildingthese kinds of systems, so I think this collaboration will be mutually beneficial.

The addition of new collaborators requires review from the centers leadership and must be approved by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. New partners can be added to increase technical capabilities and strengthen the SQMS Center. The addition of a new partner often meets a specific need.

The strength of SQMS is that it brings world experts in quantum information science together as one collaboration, said SQMS Director Anna Grassellino of Fermilab. Professor Chakram is one such expert, and we are thrilled to welcome him to the SQMS Center.

The Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center at Fermilab is supported by the DOE Office of Science.

Fermilab is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit science.energy.gov.

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SQMS Center announces the addition of Rutgers University-New Brunswick to its growing collaboration - Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

Central New York Congressmember Claudia Tenney hosted fellow representative John Katko Monday in Rome to give him an overview of the high-tech research and development begin done to thwart cyber attacks and other threats. Katko is the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, and says the work being done at the Air Force Research Lab, or Rome Lab, is remarkable and imperative for the defense of the nation.

"There's a rush to see who gets better with quantum computing, us or China. If China [beats] us, our encryption data is for nothing. So many things they're working on that impact us in every single way."

Rep. Tenney investments at the operations at Griffiss Business and Technology Park are saving lives.

"Our ability to really act with an asymmetrical battlefield that we have now with the Chinese, Russians, and Iran...there are so many enemies out there. This is where we're going, and it's happening here. Which is what's so exciting about it."

Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente says it's important not only for national security, but also for the region's economy, brain trust, and livelihood.

"What is taking place here is not taking place anywhere in the country. Now, someone might say yes it is. Not to the extent that it is, not to the diversity that it is, in terms of all the aspects of cybersecurity, quantum computing, all aspects of technology that have been developed and continue to be developed on a regular basis."

Tenney says their visit is their way to ensure accountability for the funds they secure in Congress.

"We're the ones who have advocated for it, and when we come here and see how the money is being spent and hear about it, I think it means a lot."

Rome Mayor Jackie Izzo says they're questioned about the reason they send funding requests.

"We wanted you to come what your plus-ups are doing in facilities like these. We wanted you to meet the super-talented people that we have working here that cannot be replicated. You can't just pick up our lab and think you're going to take all that talent and just move it somewhere else."

Rep. Tenney also announced the addition of 100 jobs at Defense Finance and Accounting Services, or DFAS since April. That brings their total workforce to more than 1,000. She says theyre working every day in Congress with Senators Schumer and Gillibrand to ensure funding for all of the operations at Griffiss Business and Technology Park dont get cut.

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Congressmembers Tenney, Katko Tour Griffiss High-Tech Facilities In Rome And Discuss Their Role In Combatting Threats - WAER

The trial successfully demonstrated, according to Verizon, that it is possible to replace current security processes with protocols that are quantum-proof.

To protect our private communications from future attacks by quantum computers, Verizon is trialing the use of next-generation cryptography keys to protect the virtual private networks (VPNs) that are used every day by companies around the world to prevent hacking.

Verizon implemented what it describes as a "quantum-safe" VPN between one of the company's labs in London in the UK and a US-based center in Ashburn, Virginia, using encryption keys that were generated thanks to post-quantum cryptography methods meaning that they are robust enough to withstand attacks from a quantum computer.

According to Verizon, the trial successfully demonstrated that it is possible to replace current security processes with protocols that are quantum-proof.

VPNs are a common security tool used to protect connections made over the internet, by creating a private network from a public internet connection. When a user browses the web with a VPN, all of their data is redirected through a specifically configured remote server run by the VPN host, which acts as a filter that encrypts the information.

This means that the user's IP address and any of their online activities, from sending emails to paying bills, come out as gibberish to potential hackers even on insecure networks like public WiFi, where eavesdropping is much easier.

Especially in the last few months, which have seen many employees switching to full-time working from home,VPNs have become an increasingly popular tool to ensure privacy and security on the internet.

The technology, however, is based on cryptography protocols that are not un-hackable. To encrypt data, VPN hosts use encryption keys that are generated by well-established algorithms such as RSA (RivestShamirAdleman). The difficulty of cracking the key, and therefore of reading the data, is directly linked to the algorithm's ability to create as complicated a key as possible.

In other words, encryption protocols as we know them are essentially a huge math problem for hackers to solve. With existing computers, cracking the equation is extremely difficult, which is why VPNs, for now, are still a secure solution. But quantum computers are expected to bring about huge amounts of extra computing power and with that, the ability to hack any cryptography key in minutes.

"A lot of secure communications rely on algorithms which have been very successful in offering secure cryptography keys for decades," Venkata Josyula, the director of technology at Verizon, tells ZDNet. "But there is enough research out there saying that these can be broken when there is a quantum computer available at a certain capacity. When that is available, you want to be protecting your entire VPN infrastructure."

One approach that researchers are working on consists ofdeveloping algorithms that can generate keys that are too difficult to hack, even with a quantum computer. This area of research is known as post-quantum cryptography, and is particularly sought after by governments around the world.

In the US, for example, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched a global research effort in 2016 calling on researchers to submit ideas for algorithms that would be less susceptible to a quantum attack. A few months ago, the organization selected a group of 15 algorithms that showed the most promise.

"NIST is leading a standardization process, but we didn't want to wait for that to be complete because getting cryptography to change across the globe is a pretty daunting task," says Josyula. "It could take 10 or even 20 years, so we wanted to get into this early to figure out the implications."

Verizon has significant amounts of VPN infrastructure and the company sells VPN products, which is why the team started investigating how to start enabling post-quantum cryptography right now and in existing services, Josyula adds.

One of the 15 algorithms identified by NIST, called Saber, was selected for the test. Saber generated quantum-safe cryptography keys that were delivered to the endpoints in London and Ashburn of a typical IPsec VPN through an extra layer of infrastructure, which was provided by a third-party vendor.

Whether Saber makes it to the final rounds of NIST's standardization process, in this case, doesn't matter, explains Josyula. "We tried Saber here, but we will be trying others. We are able to switch from one algorithm to the other. We want to have that flexibility, to be able to adapt in line with the process of standardization."

In other words, Verizon's test has shown that it is possible to implement post-quantum cryptography candidates on infrastructure links now, with the ability to migrate as needed between different candidates for quantum-proof algorithms.

This is important because, although a large-scale quantum computer could be more than a decade away, there is still a chance that the data that is currently encrypted with existing cryptography protocols is at risk.

The threat is known as "harvest now, decrypt later" and refers to the possibility that hackers could collect huge amounts of encrypted data and sit on it while they wait for a quantum computer to come along that could read all the information.

"If it's your Amazon shopping cart, you may not care if someone gets to see it in ten years," says Josyula. "But you can extend this to your bank account, personal number, and all the way to government secrets. It's about how far into the future you see value for the data that you own and some of these have very long lifetimes."

For this type of data, it is important to start thinking about long-term security now, which includes the risk posed by quantum computers.

A quantum-safe VPN could be a good start even though, as Josyula explains, many elements still need to be smoothed out. For example, Verizon still relied on standard mechanisms in its trial to deliver quantum-proof keys to the VPN end-points. This might be a sticking point, if it turns out that this phase of the process is not invulnerable to quantum attack.

The idea, however, is to take proactive steps to prepare, instead of waiting for the worst-case scenario to happen. Connecting London to Ashburn was a first step, and Verizon is now looking at extending its quantum-safe VPN to other locations.

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Quantum computers could read all your encrypted data. This 'quantum-safe' VPN aims to stop that - ZDNet