Toshiba creates hack-proof system: successful tests of a nano-engineered single-photon LED that allows electronic encryption at 200MHz. (Technology).

Engineer, The, June, 2002 by Philip Sen

COMPUTER hacking could become a thing of the past with an advance in nano-engineered LED technology, its developers claimed this week.

Toshiba Research Europe said its LED, which emits just one photon of light at a time, can offer electronic encryption that is impossible to break. When the LED was first revealed last year, it could work at only low frequencies, so only a small quantity of encoded information could be transmitted at a time. Recent work means it can now transmit at 200MHz, and it will soon be taken up to gigahertz levels, making the technology a viable encryption tool.

However clever the hacker is, the system would be 100 per cent secure, claimed Toshiba researcher Dr Andrew Shields. He said his method is 'the first electrically driven...