Researchers combine holograms and AI to create uncrackable optical encryption

https://www.optica.org/about/newsroom/news_releases/2025/researchers_combine_holograms_and_ai_to_create_uncrackable_optical_encryption_system/

by gnabgib • 1 year ago

26 13 1 year ago

optica.org

phyzome• 1 year ago

So it's unreliable, doesn't have a backing theory demonstrating why it should be considered secure ("we can't figure out how to crack it, so it's uncrackable"), and requires manufacturing a physical object in order to work.

...why on earth would anyone find this compelling?

lexicality• 1 year ago

It has AI in the title!

ashoeafoot• 1 year ago

Take my money, good sir and all the hopes of the oligarchs rest upon you stabilize and keeping going a society running out.

PS: If you dont return, at las return the wheelbarrow, do not worry much then its only paper.

j2kun• 1 year ago

"we can't figure out how to crack it"

To be fair, this is the theory that all security guarantees boil down to (excluding the "so it's uncrackable" part)

beardedwizard• 1 year ago

I would argue this extends to all systems and behaviors that aren't formally verified. Bugs notwithstanding, breaking current encryption is a mathematically backed concept. The issue is broken implementations.

GTP2• 1 year ago

But in cryptography, you have a security claim that is based on the hardness of a well known mathematical probelm. So you know that breaking a certain scheme is as hard as solving that problem. If someone finds out how to solve such a problem efficiently the scheme is broken, but as long as no one has a solution the scheme is safe. Here it is not clear to me what is the hard problem that makes this scheme secure. Yes, you have light scattering in a random way, but they also showed that it is possible to train a neural network to get the data back. Why can't an attacker do the same?

bawolff• 1 year ago

There is a difference between - some random dude who invented the scheme can't figure out how to crack it - and - the entire mathematical world has been trying to figure it out for the last 2200 years (since Eratosthenes) and still haven't.

GTP2• 1 year ago

Exactly. Above all, my concern is that, at least from the linked article, I don't see why an attacker wouldn't be able to train a neural network himself to then decrypt the data. Hopefully they addressed this point in the paper.

TechDebtDevin• 1 year ago

Well we do manufacture TPMs..

3eb7988a1663• 1 year ago

  ...After optimizing the experimental procedure and training the neural network, they showed that the neural network could accurately retrieve the encoded images 90-95% of the time. They say that this rate could be further improved with more extensive training of the neural network.

Ah yes, the lossy, sometimes-it-works kind of encryption.

sd9• 1 year ago

Seems more like compression? Or even just a cool trick?

Clearly it's not reliable or secure enough for encryption yet.

varispeed• 1 year ago

How long until someone who doesn't know it is uncrackable, cracks it?

Euphorbium• 1 year ago

Researchers combine holograms and AI to create uncrackable optical encryption

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