Anti-eavesdropping feature for phone calls debuts on Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro

There were more surprises to come, it turned out.

On Monday, China Telecom Quantum Group, in collaboration with Huawei, introduced the Huawei Mate 60 Pro Quantum Secure Call Customized Terminal – a smart device equipped with quantum encryption technology. According to the company, this makes it virtually impossible for anyone to eavesdrop on a secure conversation.

The device debuted at the 2023 Digital Technology Ecology Conference in Guangzhou, in southern China’s Guangdong province, according to an article on China Telecom Quantum Group’s official social media account. The joint venture was formed in 2020 by China Telecom – one of the country’s three state-owned telecom companies – and quantum information technology company QuantumCTek Group.

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Most current smartphones are based on chips and operating systems developed by American companies, some reportedly hacked by the CIA. Huawei, which in 2019 was added to a US blacklist that cut off access to advanced US technology, has turned to its homegrown 9100S CPU and Harmony operating system to power its devices.

The Chinese government has reportedly gifted Huawei phones to top officials from “friendly countries” such as Venezuela and Serbia.

The new quantum terminal has a “triple protection” strategy, using a domestically manufactured chip, algorithms classified as state secrets and a quantum security SIM card for added security.

According to the article, the Mate 60 Pro handset can be upgraded to make quantum-encrypted phone calls directly through the built-in keypad. The device can also encrypt file transfers and instant messages, as well as other functions through a pre-installed quantum-secure messaging app.

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“This kind of encrypted communication can only be achieved between terminals with this feature. It can be used in sectors such as public security,” said Wang Chao, general manager of XT Quantech, a Shanghai-based company that uses quantum technology to provide information security solutions.

Encryption processes involve the generation of random numbers. A scientist researching quantum communication at a top mainland university, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Post that the core idea of ​​the technology is to transform the way random numbers are generated – from traditional methods to a quantum-based one.

“Smartphones that can make quantum-secure calls are functionally similar to their traditional counterparts,” Zheng Jiasheng, head of China Telecom Quantum Group, told the state-owned Science and Technology Daily in 2020.

“The difference lies in the incorporation of quantum keys produced using quantum information technology,” Zheng said.

Implementing the technology is not particularly challenging, according to Zheng. Telecom operators preload quantum keys – true random numbers generated by a quantum random number generator – into the specially designed quantum security SIM card. “These cards are not quantum chips,” Zheng stressed.

Making a quantum phone call generates two secret keys to verify the identity of the caller and the information about the call, thereby ensuring end-to-end encryption.

Users can get the new feature by visiting a store to buy the special SIM card and download their own limited number of exclusive keys. When the keys run out, customers must top them up at a nearby outlet, similar to refueling a car.

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This particular application of quantum technology is not new. In 2020, for example, South Korean telecom operator SK Telecom partnered with Samsung to launch the first quantum-encrypted 5G smartphone – the Galaxy A Quantum – based on similar technological principles.

The only difference is that the Galaxy A Quantum series, including its latest Galaxy Quantum 3, launched in 2022, runs on the Android system, while Huawei’s latest Mate phone runs on its own Harmony 4.0 operating system.

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“The security keys are truly random and difficult to decipher, and they are invalidated immediately after the call session ends,” the company said in its article.

Although the quantum phone call function can ensure the randomness of keys according to quantum principles, the new product cannot eliminate eavesdropping because it lacks a quantum physical mechanism in the distribution process, according to several insiders.