‘Nearly unbreakable’ encryption inspired by biology

A team of physicists has built a "nearly unbreakable" encryption system devised using the same mathematical principles that explain how the human heart and lungs function in unison.

The system has been described in a paper published in Physical Review X, penned by Tomislav Stankovski, Peter McClintock and Aneta Stefanovska of Lancaster University, and a patent has already been filed. The kicker is, not one of the physics professors had experience in encryption. Their joint backgrounds are in engineering, nonlinear dynamics and biomedical/physics engineering, but when they read up on the latest discoveries around the cardiorespiratory coupling function -- the way in which the heart and lungs work together continuously -- the potential applications became clear.

"Knowing about some of the open problems in encryption, we suddenly realised that what we tried to understand in biology can also be applied here," Stefanovska told Wired.co.uk. "Coupling" essentially involves a time-varying delay, that when translated to encryption systems means an infinite number of secret encryption keys shared by the sender and recipient is possible. It means it is "highly resistant to conventional methods of attack" according to Stankovski.

Stefanovska explains: "The information signals are encrypted in the coupling functions; i.e. they modulate the nonlinear coupling functions between two dynamical systems (analogous to the heart and lungs). Two signals, one from each system, are transmitted through the public channel. At the receiver, knowing what those coupling functions are, the process can be reversed."

The system also lowers the chances quite dramatically of any interference and "random noise" that can weaken such communication systems. "This makes it suitable for implementation not only for landline but also for mobile and wireless communications, where the level of external interference tends to be higher," write the authors in Physical Review X.

The system has been rigorously tested, leading McClintock to claim: "This promises an encryption scheme that is so nearly unbreakable that it will be equally unwelcome to internet criminals and official eavesdroppers." Stefanovska explains that the word "nearly" is only used for the sake of caution -- to date, there have been no possible breaches to the system identified.

The filed patent names Robert Young, a cybersecurity expert, as a co-developer, and the team says so far "initial reactions were positive" from industry experts.

When we asked Stefanovska about the impact such a system could have in a post-NSA/GCHQ mass surveillance world, she responded: "The potential certainly exists -- and the importance and relevance is self-evident. It depends on the outcome of attempts to break the encryption scheme. If it resists attack to the extent we anticipate, there can indeed be real impact."

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'Nearly unbreakable' encryption inspired by biology