This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Reliably verifying the location of a device connected to the internet or other networks is important for various real-world applications. For instance, it could be valuable for authorizing financial transactions, securing communications and controlling who can access specific databases or services.
Some current methods used to verify a device's position can be deceived using various techniques, such as GPS spoofing, manipulation of location data and relay attacks. These techniques allow attackers to transmit counterfeit satellite-navigation signals, alter software-reported GPS coordinates or intercept and forward verification messages, respectively. Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China recently developed a quantum position-verification protocol that could securely and reliably confirm the location of devices in a network.
Their protocol, introduced in a paper published in Nature Physics, successfully authenticated a device's position using two verifiers separated by 2 km (1.2 miles), narrowing its possible location to a range of 74.3 meters (244 feet). "Our group has been working on quantum key distribution and quantum communication for many years," Guan-Jie Fan-Yuan, a co-first author of the paper, and Shuang Wang and Zhen-Qiang Yin, its corresponding authors, told Phys.org. "Quantum key distribution allows two distant parties to establish shared secret keys, essentially creating a secure connection between them, which is typically used for secure communication.
Yet we have long been interested in a deeper question: once such a secure connection has been established, what else can we do with it beyond secure communication?" Current localization technologies, such as GPS, are very effective in tracking the position of users. However, attackers can alter a device's apparent location using various well-established techniques. "In other words, the challenge is not simply to determine a position, but to make that position trustworthy," said Fan-Yuan, Wang and Yin.
"Quantum position verification offers a fundamentally different way to address this problem. It combines the properties of quantum information with relativistic constraints on how fast information can travel, allowing multiple distributed verifiers with established secure connections to verify the claimed position of a remote prover, with security rooted in fundamental physics." According to Fan-Yuan and his colleagues, quantum position verification protocols could help improve the security and reliability of positioning systems. Specifically, these protocols could make location information more trustworthy.
"The idea of quantum position verification has been studied theoretically for many years, but there was still a substantial gap between theory and experiment. In practice, quantum signals inevitably suffer from loss and errors, while position verification also places extremely demanding requirements on system latency," said the authors. "Our main objective was therefore to overcome these barriers, develop a protocol suitable for realistic experimental conditions, and build a complete system to demonstrate quantum position verification experimentally." Discover the latest in science, tech, and space with over 100,000 subscribers who rely on Phys.org for daily insights. d research that matter—daily or weekly.
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