Stephen J. Wiesner (born 1942) is a research physicist currently living in Israel. As a graduate student at Columbia University in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he discovered several of the most important ideas in quantum information theory, including quantum money (which led to quantum key distribution), quantum multiplexing [1] (the earliest example of oblivious transfer) and superdense coding[2] (the first and most basic example of entanglement-assisted communication). Although this work remained unpublished for over a decade, it circulated widely enough in manuscript form to stimulate the emergence of quantum information science in the 1980s and 1990s. Wiesner is the son of Jerome Wiesner and Laya Wiesner. He received his undergraduate degree from Brandeis University.
As of 2013 Wiesner works (by choice) as a construction laborer in Jerusalem[3].
Bibliography[edit]
Oct 19, 2014 Wiesner S (1983) Conjugate coding. Manuscript written while participating in the Columbia University student protests of April 1968 and eventually published in ACM SIGACT News 15(1):78–88 Google Scholar. . 1970 - Stephen Wiesner invents conjugate coding. 1973 - Alexander Holevo publishes a paper showing that n qubits cannot carry more than n classical bits of information (a result known as 'Holevo's theorem' or 'Holevo's bound'). Bennett shows that computation can be done reversibly.
^S.J. Wiesner, 'Conjugate Coding', SIGACT News 15:1, pp. 78–88, 1983.
^C. Bennett and S.J. Wiesner. Communication via one- and two-particle operators on Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen states. Phys. Rev. Lett., 69:2881, 1992
^Scott, Aaronson (2013). Quantum Computing Since Democritus. Cambridge University Press. p. 127. ISBN978-0521199568. Retrieved 8 August 2018.
References[edit]
The Code Book, Simon Singh, (Doubleday, 1999), pp. 331–338.
Jerry Wiesner: scientist, statesman, humanist : memories and memoirs, Jerome Bert Wiesner and Walter A. Rosenblith, (MIT Press, 2003), p. 591.
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stephen_Wiesner&oldid=872915398'
Conjugate coding is a cryptographic tool, introduced by Stephen Wiesner[1] in the late 1960s. It is part of the two applications Wiesner described for quantum coding, along with a method for creating fraud-proof banking notes. The application where the concept was based from was a method of transmitting multiple messages in such a way that reading one destroys the others. This is called quantum multiplexing and it uses photons polarized in conjugate bases as 'qubits' to pass information.[2] Conjugate coding also is a simple extension of a random number generator.[3]
At the behest of Charles Bennett,[3] Wiesner published the manuscript explaining the basic idea of conjugate coding with a number of examples but it was not embraced because it was significantly ahead of its time.[4] Because its publication has been rejected, it was developed to the world of public-key cryptography in the 1980s as Oblivious Transfer, first by Michael Rabin and then by Shimon Even. It is used in the field of quantum computing. The initial concept of quantum cryptography developed by Bennett and Gilles Brassard was also based on this concept.[3]
^Morris, Jeffrey; Grimaila, Michael; Hodson, Douglas; Jacques, David; Baumgartner, Gerald (2013). Emerging Trends in ICT Security: Chapter 9. A Survey of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) Technologies. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. ISBN 9780128070666.
^ abcRogers, Daniel (2010). Broadband Quantum Cryptography. San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool Publishers. p. 31. ISBN 9781608450596.
^Morsch, Oliver (2008). Quantum Bits and Quantum Secrets: How Quantum Physics is Revolutionizing Codes and Computers. Berlin: John Wiley & Sons. p. 157. ISBN 9783527407101.
Oblivious transfer
In cryptography, an oblivious transfer (OT) protocol is a type of protocol in which a sender transfers one of potentially many pieces of information to a receiver, but remains oblivious as to what piece (if any) has been transferred.
The first form of oblivious transfer was introduced in 1981 by Michael O. Rabin.1 In this form, the sender sends a message to the receiver with probability 1/2, while the sender remains oblivious as to whether or not the receiver received the message. Rabin's oblivious transfer scheme is based on the RSA cryptosystem. A more useful form of oblivious transfer called 1–2 oblivious transfer or '1 out of 2 oblivious transfer', was developed later by Shimon Even, Oded Goldreich, and Abraham Lempel,2 in order to build protocols for secure multiparty computation. It is generalized to '1 out of n oblivious transfer' where the user gets exactly one database element without the server getting to know which element was queried, and without the user knowing anything about the other elements that were not retrieved. The latter notion of oblivious transfer is a strengthening of private information retrieval, in which the database is not kept private.
Claude Crépeau showed that Rabin's oblivious transfer is equivalent to 1–2 oblivious transfer.3Further work has revealed oblivious transfer to be a fundamental and important problem in cryptography. It is considered one of the critical problems in the field, because of the importance of the applications that can be built based on it. In particular, it is complete for secure multiparty computation: that is, given an implementation of oblivious transfer it is possible to securely evaluate any polynomial time computable function without any additional primitive.4
Quantum cryptography
Quantum cryptography is the science of exploiting quantum mechanical properties to perform cryptographic tasks. The best known example of quantum cryptography is quantum key distribution which offers an information-theoretically secure solution to the key exchange problem. The advantage of quantum cryptography lies in the fact that it allows the completion of various cryptographic tasks that are proven or conjectured to be impossible using only classical (i.e. non-quantum) communication. For example, it is impossible to copy data encoded in a quantum state. If one attempts to read the encoded data, the quantum state will be changed (no-cloning theorem). This could be used to detect eavesdropping in quantum key distribution.
Quantum key distribution
Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a secure communication method which implements a cryptographic protocol involving components of quantum mechanics. It enables two parties to produce a shared random secret key known only to them, which can then be used to encrypt and decrypt messages. It is often incorrectly called quantum cryptography, as it is the best-known example of a quantum cryptographic task.
An important and unique property of quantum key distribution is the ability of the two communicating users to detect the presence of any third party trying to gain knowledge of the key. This results from a fundamental aspect of quantum mechanics: the process of measuring a quantum system in general disturbs the system. A third party trying to eavesdrop on the key must in some way measure it, thus introducing detectable anomalies. By using quantum superpositions or quantum entanglement and transmitting information in quantum states, a communication system can be implemented that detects eavesdropping. If the level of eavesdropping is below a certain threshold, a key can be produced that is guaranteed to be secure (i.e. the eavesdropper has no information about it), otherwise no secure key is possible and communication is aborted.
The security of encryption that uses quantum key distribution relies on the foundations of quantum mechanics, in contrast to traditional public key cryptography, which relies on the computational difficulty of certain mathematical functions, and cannot provide any mathematical proof as to the actual complexity of reversing the one-way functions used. QKD has provable security based on information theory, and forward secrecy.
The main drawback of Quantum Key Distribution is that it usually relies on having an authenticated classical channel of communications. In modern cryptography, having an authenticated classical channel means that one have either already exchanged a symmetric key of sufficient length or public keys of sufficient security level. With such information already available, one can achieve authenticated and secure communications without using QKD, such as by using the Galois Counter Mode of the Advanced Encryption Standard. Thus it is sometimes jokingly said that QKD does the work of a Stream Cipher at a million times the cost.
Quantum key distribution is only used to produce and distribute a key, not to transmit any message data. This key can then be used with any chosen encryption algorithm to encrypt (and decrypt) a message, which can then be transmitted over a standard communication channel. The algorithm most commonly associated with QKD is the one-time pad, as it is provably secure when used with a secret, random key. In real-world situations, it is often also used with encryption using symmetric key algorithms like the Advanced Encryption Standard algorithm.
Quantum money
Quantum money is a proposed design of bank notes making them impossible to forge, by using quantum physics. The idea influenced the development of quantum key distribution protocols used in quantum cryptography.
The idea was put forward in about 1970 by Stephen Wiesner, a graduate student at Columbia University, though it was rejected by a number of scientific journals, meaning that it remained unpublished until 1983.
Stephen Wiesner
Stephen J. Wiesner (born 1942) is a research physicist currently living in Israel. As a graduate student at Columbia University in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he discovered several of the most important ideas in quantum information theory, including quantum money (which led to quantum key distribution), quantum multiplexing (the earliest example of oblivious transfer) and superdense coding (the first and most basic example of entanglement-assisted communication). Although this work remained unpublished for over a decade, it circulated widely enough in manuscript form to stimulate the emergence of quantum information science in the 1980s and 1990s. Wiesner is the son of Jerome Wiesner and Laya Wiesner. He received his undergraduate degree from Brandeis University.
As of 2013 Wiesner works (by choice) as a construction laborer in Jerusalem.
Timeline of cryptography
Below is a timeline of notable events related to cryptography.
Timeline of quantum computing
This is a timeline of quantum computing.
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