Time travel, such as, say, through a “wormhole,” appears to make it possible to distinguish quantum information that usually can’t be distinguished. That ability would disrupt the absolute security of quantum encryption, theoretical physicist Todd Brun and collaborators report online in the quantum physics archive.

Perfect secrecy has come a step closer with the launch of the world's first computer network protected by unbreakable quantum encryption at a scientific conference in Vienna.

A group of international researchers and Siemens Austria has demonstrated in Vienna the transmission of quantum-encrypted messages across commercial telecommunication links. The achievement could bring quantum encryption close to commercial deployment.

University of Vienna researchers hope to send an experiment to the International Space Station (ISS) by the middle of the next decade that would pave the way for transcontinental transmission of secret messages encoded using quantum entanglement.

Secret codes used by the forthcoming European satellite navigation system, Galileo, have been cracked by American scientists, casting doubt on European Union promises that the £2.3 billion project will pay for itself through commercial fees.

Japanese scientists have come up with a method for encrypting messages using quasars, which emit radio waves and are thought to be powered by black holes.

Nazi code that eluded the best cryptographers the Allied forces had to offer during World War II has been solved by an amateur codebreaker with the assistance of a network of computers.

The M4 Message Breaking Project is harnessing the power of distributed computing to crack a few remaining Enigma intercepts from WWII. The first intercept has already been broken and an interpretation posted.

Australian scientists believe they have developed an unbreakable information code to stop hackers, using a diamond, a kitchen microwave oven and an optical fibre.

The Secret Service, inspired by the popularity and success of distributed computing projects like SETI@Home program, is using a distributed computing program on about 4,000 of its office computers to crack encrypted documents critical for its investigations.