DBT Bureau
Pune,12 July 2024
Indian scientists have achieved a significant milestone in cybersecurity by pioneering a novel method to generate genuinely unpredictable random numbers. This innovation is pivotal for enhancing encryption in quantum communications and has the potential to transform the landscape of safeguarding sensitive data moving forward.
The security of quantum communications relies on inherent randomness as a seed, such as randomness in measurement bases chosen by the sender and receiver. This prevents malicious agents from deciphering secure information through prior knowledge of such choice of bases.
The Quantum Information and Computing (QuIC) lab at Raman Research Institute, Bengaluru, had performed a photonic experiment to demonstrate a violation of what is called the Leggett Garg Inequalities (LGI)– — a litmus test for “quantumness” in a system in a loophole-free manner.
Taking this further, over the last few years, the group has carried out extensive research in collaboration with researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, IISER-Thiruvananthapuram and the Bose Institute, Kolkata to use such LGI violations in a completely unexplored domain– truly unpredictable random number generation, secure against device tampering and imperfections. These numbers are crucial in applications like cryptographic key generation, secure password creation and digital signatures among others.
In today’s digital world, where we rely heavily on technology, strong passwords are vital for everyone’s safety. This new method offers the enhanced protection we all need in our daily lives, by using truly random numbers to generate keys that will be used to encrypt the passwords, the researchers noted.
There are several advantages to generating certified random numbers using this method.
“These include the creation of strongly protected passwords, enhanced account security by resisting brute-force attacks, ensuring uniqueness, integrity thereby preventing forgery and token generation with multi-factor authentication, adding a crucial security layer in this vulnerable cyber world., said Debashis Saha, IISER Thiruvananthapuram faculty.
In the photonic experiment led by RRI, the team replaced this conventional two-particle system with a single-particle setup.
“The existing two-particle scenario for measuring correlations had drawbacks, wherein, an entangled state of two particles would get created and transferred to two measurement stations. Noise generated during the process could, thus, interfere with the entanglement. Besides, the requirement of maintaining a distance of 200 meters between the two particles to ensure the loophole-free design, makes the whole process highly complicated”, said Pingal Pratyush Nath, a PhD student at IISc.
Additionally, the single-particle scheme used measurements that required temporal separation instead of spatial, thus providing a compact random number generator with the potential to get commercialized for varied applications.
With further engineering interventions and innovations, devices adopting this method could find powerful applications not only in cybersecurity and data encryption but also in the context of varied types of randomness-based simulations and randomized control trial statistical studies in diverse important areas.
