As our society becomes increasingly reliant on transfer and storage of digital data for various applications (such as cryptosystems, electronic digital signing system, communication, and cloud storage), finding new strategies to improve the security of this data is becoming a key issue of the 21st century. Since quantum computers, which will soon be more widespread, have the capability to breach many of the encryption methods currently used to protect data, discovering better ways to generate and distribute digital keys is becoming an increasingly urgent priority.
There has been a lot of research done to try resolve this issue but so far all of these methods, including Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), have continued to rely on improving the strength of encryption; for instance, creating more complex and harder to crack encryption algorithms. However, it is always theoretically possible to break these kinds of keys with sufficient time and/or computer power.
The newly developed muography techniques, COSMOCAT (Cosmic coding and transfer) and COSMOCATS (Cosmic coding and transfer storage), have tackled these data transfer/storage problems for wireless near field communication in a unique way by: 1. discovering a new way to generate one-time, truly random keys created not with algorithms but by detecting naturally precipitating cosmic ray muon arrival times and 2. eliminating the requirement for sharing/storing encryption keys over an internet/private network connection. Since the encrypted data and the key to decrypt the data are not sent on a network from a sender to a receiver, the security of a COSMOCATS system is completely impregnable from the hacking or spoofing attacks that plague other methods. Additionally, both COSMOCAT and COSMOCATS consume less electric power.
In its first iteration, COSMOCAT, GPS or an equivalent system like Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) is required for key generation. This causes degraded security and efficiency. COSMOCATS has addressed this by using CTS as an alternative and consequently has improved the key strength (by 4 orders of magnitude) and efficiency of the key authenticating rate (by 5 orders of magnitude). COSMOCATS has also developed a sophisticated data storage strategy which is impregnable from off-site interference or attack.
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