Quantum encryption is about to make life much more difficult for Internet spies.

A new method of scrambling data manipulates light to create more complex patterns than just "on" or "off," as with typical encryption. As a result, the information in an e-mail message or file is indecipherable because it contains too much "noise."

Not only will it make data uncrackable, the new technology also speeds up the increasingly slow process of sending coded messages over the Internet.

Horace Yuen, one of the project's founders and a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northwestern University, said it's an especially timely tech development in light of the global focus on terrorism.

One threat people worry about is computer-savvy terrorists infiltrating the systems that control public utilities.

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• News: Hackers beware: quantum encryption is coming (12 November 2002)
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