An urgent call comes in from the White House. But the recipient is skeptical: They need a way to verify that the message comes from the purported location. Quantum physics has a solution.
Scientists have demonstrated a quantum technique to ensure that someone is in the location they claim to be, physicist Abigail Gookin reported March 18 at the American Physical Society’s Global Physics Summit. Called quantum position verification, the technique is based on the concept of quantum entanglement, in which the fates of two far-flung particles are closely linked.
In the future, the technique could be useful for preventing some types of phishing attacks, or for limiting which users can access certain resources. (For example, access to sensitive nuclear weapons infrastructure could be restricted to those in a secure government building.) The method could be part of a future quantum internet that could one day provide various types of ultrasecure communications.
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