Welcome to CyberSoc

Roger Colbeck: Quantum cryptography with untrusted devices

PZA/106X - 30/04/2025

Professor Roger Colbeck presents a guest talk on Quantum cryptography with untrusted devices. Classical cryptography schemes rely on the computational difficulty of a particular problem for security, a difficulty which is usually believed, but unproven. Quantum cryptography allows us to go beyond this with protocols that can be proven secure provided the devices used behave correctly. In this talk Roger will discuss an even stronger type of quantum protocol that works without the need to trust the devices used to run it. Remarkably, by utilising the "spooky" phenomenon of quantum entanglement it is possible to prove that devices must be generating secure key without the need to know what the devices are doing internally. This corresponds to the strongest form of security we know of, and arguably the strongest form possible.