European quantum research body QuTech has opened a testbed to commercialize quantum networking, working with Eurofiber and Juniper Networks, according to 
China launched a new quantum satellite last week that could be a first step towards establishing an ultra-secure communications network with global coverage according to SatNews. Quantum News Briefs summarizes here.
The quantum satellite, developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, would conduct quantum key distribution experiments in lower-Earth orbit, the report said. It is the second quantum satellite launched by China after it sent the world’s first such satellite, Mozi, into orbit in August 2016. Called Jinan 1, it weighs less than 100kg — about a sixth of the weight of Mozi — but can generate quantum keys at speeds two or three magnitude higher, the project team said in a statement posted on WeChat.
“It is also an important step. It makes China the first country in the world to achieve real-time, satellite-to-ground quantum key distribution with micro-nano satellite and miniaturized ground stations,” the statement said.
China’s first quantum satellite, Mozi, is equipped with what was the most sensitive device when it went into orbit six years ago. The satellite has conducted record-breaking experiments in quantum physics, including proving the feasibility of quantum communication from one continent to another.
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Post-Quantum Encryption Contender Taken Out: “Totally SIKEd”
Last month, the US Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, selected four post-quantum computing encryption algorithms to replace algorithms like RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman, which are unable to withstand attacks from a quantum computer. In the same move, NIST advanced four additional algorithms as potential replacements pending further testing in hopes one or more of them may also be suitable encryption alternatives in a post-quantum world.
A new and powerful attack that used a single traditional computer to completely break a fourth-round candidate highlights the risks involved in standardizing the next generation of encryption algorithms.The new attack breaks SIKE, which is one of the latter four additional algorithms. Dan Goodin of of the venerable ArsTechnica explains in article today summarized here for Quantum News Briefs readers.
SIKE—short for Supersingular Isogeny Key Encapsulation—is now likely out of the running thanks to research that was published over the weekend by researchers from the Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography group at KU Leuven. The paper, titled An Efficient Key Recovery Attack on SIDH (Preliminary Version), described a technique that uses complex mathematics and a single traditional PC to recover the encryption keys protecting the SIKE-protected transactions. The entire process requires only about an hour’s time. Goodin called it “Getting Totally SIKEd”.
“The newly uncovered weakness is clearly a major blow to SIKE,” David Jao, a professor at the University of Waterloo and co-inventor of SIKE, wrote in an email. “The attack is really unexpected.”
It is perhaps a bit concerning that this is the second example in the past six months of a scheme that made it to the 3rd round of the NIST review process before being completely broken using a classical algorithm. (The earlier example was Rainbow, which was broken in February.) More important than understanding the math, Jonathan Katz, an IEEE Member and professor in the department of computer science at the University of Maryland, wrote in an email: “the attack is entirely classical, and does not require quantum computers at all.”
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Israel first launched its quantum technology initiative in 2018, for which in February it announced a $62 million budget. Now, Israel is also placing significant bets on quantum according to this week’s article by 
Scientists at MIT and the University of Texas at Austin have for the first time captured snapshots of a light-induced metastable quantum phase hidden from the equilibrium universe by using a suite of advanced spectroscopic tools. They were able to view this transition in real-time by using single-shot spectroscopy techniques on a 2D crystal with nanoscale modulations of electron density.
