When you send your credit card number over the Internet to pay for a new book or a pair of pants, the number is mathematically disguised -- encrypted -- so that the original string of digits can be decoded only by . . .
When you send your credit card number over the Internet to pay for a new book or a pair of pants, the number is mathematically disguised -- encrypted -- so that the original string of digits can be decoded only by the merchant at the other end of your shopping spree. Such encryption is common, but it isn't entirely secure or practical for all transactions. In Friday's issue of the journal Science, researchers report a new method that may improve electronic security: a material that "does the math" for encryption.

Like the low-tech wax seals of old, these tokens could become the secure devices used with smart cards -- cards with an embedded computer chip that store financial or personal data -- as well as with sensors and digital signatures, said authors Ravikanth Pappu of ThingMagic LLC, Neil Gershenfeld of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Bits and Atoms, and MIT graduate students Benjamin Recht and Jason Taylor.

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