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Showing posts from December 21, 2005

New way to secure communication

Texas A&M electrical engineer says simple scheme can stop electronic eavesdroppers Dr. Laszlo Kish says his simple scheme can stop electronic eavesdroppers. COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- James Bond may use the fanciest, most expensive and high-tech devices to thwart would-be eavesdroppers, but in a pinch, the super-spy can use one Texas A&M engineer's simple, low-cost scheme to keep data secure from the bad guys. Dr. Laszlo Kish, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M, proposed that a simple pair of resistors on the ends of a communications wire such as a phone or computer line could keep eavesdroppers from intercepting secret messages. Added electronic disturbances (called "noise") or the natural thermal noise (called Johnson noise) produced by the resistors makes the scheme function and keep the message secret. Kish's paper, "Totally secure classical communication utilizing Johnson(-lik