Fraud-Proof Credit Cards Through Quantum Physics

Researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology and the University of Twente have come up with a secure way to authenticate he credit cards, IDs and biometrics with quantum cryptography. It is the method of quantum secure authentication through optical keys, which consist of sending a beam of light at cards with very special paint and later the reflection will use as the authentication mechanism.

It involves the coherent states of light with photon number, which means there are a lot of spaces for the bouncing of photons, as it can be more than one space on same time, so whenever the credit cards reflect the beam with specific paint there will be more dots or points of light will sent back than there are photons and it is well known that attackers won’t have enough amount of data to measure the entire pattern.

Research Details: 

This solution is very easy in implementation with current technology and it doesn’t depend on claim of researcher and stored data. In the process of research experts used the cards coated with millions of nano-particles in the form of white paint, which help to bounce the incoming light particles. In research experts have used the two spatial light modulators, a photon detector and a pinhole. In the process one of SLM have transformed incoming light on to desired challenge wave-front to sent it on the card and the reflected response with challenge were stored in a database.

In process each response of pair will requires 20 KB of memory or for 2,500 pairs it will require 50-MB of database and correct response were sent to a lens behind, which will be behind second SLM that focused them onto a photon detector to authenticate them.

System details: 

High spatial dimension states with photons are the main challenges for system. The created patterns will depend on the challenge as well as the position of the paint particles. In experiment each challenge was described by a 50 x 50 binary matrix, where every element corresponding to a phase was either 0 or Pi. As per the lead researcher, “All we need to make the illumination pattern complex to make sure that number of photons are lower than the number of pixels, which appears in image.

The first SLM will transform the wavefront of an incoming plane into a selected challenge wavefront at random from of database. As the challenge is created dynamically and exists only after the transformation, so it cannot be intercepted. All the response will be recorded in a phase-sensitive manner.

Nothing is impossible: 

When it comes to the failure of experiment, so system can be brake with the help of passive linear optical system, which can automatically transforms the any challenge into the correct response and it is very close to make the physical copy of key. So for full proof security must be done in the patterns of layers as different patterns require different level of security.