Relativity could ensure security for cash machines

Brassard, Gilles

doi:10.1038/d41586-021-02950-4

NEWS AND VIEWS
03 November 2021

Relativity could ensure security for cash machines

Entering your personal identification number using the keypad of a cash machine is notoriously insecure. A clever application of the special theory of relativity could make identification safer.

Gilles Brassard ⁰

Gilles Brassard
1. Gilles Brassard is in the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec H3T 1J4, Canada.
View author publications

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Access through your institution

Buy or subscribe

When you type in your personal identification number (PIN) at a cash machine, you feel safe — provided you cover the keypad with your hand. But even the machines attached to banks are vulnerable to attack by fraudsters, some of whom go as far as to add fake machinery to legitimate machines as a way of stealing PINs (see go.nature.com/3p9r431). To prevent this type of fraud, a solution is needed that allows people to prove their identity without disclosing any secret information. Writing in Nature, Alikhani et al.¹ describe an experiment that achieves this goal with unprecedented security, guaranteed by Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity.

Access options

Access through your institution

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Nature 599, 36-37 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02950-4

References

Alikhani, P. et al. Nature 599, 47–50 (2021).
Article Google Scholar
Goldwasser, S., Micali, S. & Rackoff, C. SIAM J. Comput. 18, 186–208 (1989).
Article Google Scholar
Goldreich, O., Micali, S. & Wigderson, A. J. Assoc. Comput. Mach. 38, 690–728 (1991).
Article Google Scholar
Feige, U., Fiat, A. & Shamir, A. J. Cryptol. 1, 77–94 (1988).
Article Google Scholar
Shor, P. W. SIAM J. Comput. 26, 1484–1509 (1997).
Article Google Scholar
Ben-Or, M., Goldwasser, S., Kilian, J. & Wigderson, A. in Proc. 20th Annu. ACM Symp. Theory of Computing 113–131 (ACM, 1988).
Google Scholar
Crépeau, C., Massenet, A., Salvail, L., Stinchcombe, L. S. & Yang, N. in Proc. 1st Conf. Information-Theoretic Cryptography 4:1–4:18 (LIPIcs, 2020).
Google Scholar
Einstein, A., Podolsky, B. & Rosen, N. Phys. Rev. 47, 777–780 (1935).
Article Google Scholar
Bell, J. S. Physics 1, 195–200 (1964).
Article Google Scholar
Crépeau, C., Salvail, L., Simard, J.-R. & Tapp, A. in Adv. Cryptol. — ASIACRYPT 2011 407–430 (Springer, 2011).
Google Scholar
Chailloux, A. & Leverrier, A. in Adv. Cryptol. — EUROCRYPT 2017 Part III, 369–396 (Springer, 2017).
Google Scholar