China building an ‘unhackable’ computer network
China has ploughed £60m into fibre-optic cables which will, theoretically, create a computer network between Beijing and Shanghai which is unhackable.
According to the Telegraph, within the next two years the cables will “transmit quantum encryption keys that can completely secure government, financial and military information from eavesdroppers.”
The project kicked off after the Edward Snowden revelations, which lead professor, Pan Jianwei from the University of Science and Technology China (USTC), said was evidence that “we are always being hacked.”
He said the cable could see all communications in China, including photographs on cloud servers, feature quantum encryption, which writes codes, or keys, on single photons of light.
If a hacker tries to intercept, the encoding on the photon will be disturbed which is then be detected.
However, Pan said that initially it will be useful for only larger organisations, like the government.
The project has been funded by the central government and supported by the Central Military Commission.