Sophisticated hackers who have enjoyed recent success infiltrating high-profile companies might not have been so fortunate if a new Oak Ridge National Laboratory system had been in place. The patented technology developed by Nathanael Paul's team introduces true randomness generated by a quantum physical process to overcome a vulnerability in the conventional two-factor authentication process. "The log-in process where users may employ a user ID-password combination is prone to someone trying to guess a password," Paul said. "If just one user's password is compromised this can potentially make an entire organization vulnerable." Even more advanced systems that require a user to know a password and have a hardware token that displays periodic values used during a log-in can fall prey to sophisticated hackers.
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