cryptography

“When MI6 converted this into a cryptography station, I jumped at the chance to run it. I grew up in Edinburgh, so it was close to home and far from office politics. The best of both worlds.”

Since then, hBN has gained widespread attention and application across various quantum fields and technologies, including sensors, imaging, cryptography, and computing, thanks to its layered structure and ease of manipulation.

This increasing complexity is believed to be what gives quantum computers the power to solve certain types of problems much faster than classical computers, such as those in cryptography in which large numbers must be quickly factored.

A researcher in cryptography in Berlin, Henning Seidler, believes the most likely theory is that the officer dialled in via his mobile phone and the call was picked up by spies' antenna who can also "forward" the traffic onto the main, official antenna.

Mr. Walker was well known in tech circles, not just for his triumphs in business but also for his outsize skills as a programmer — he was credited with developing an early prototype of the computer virus — and as a voluble writer who filled his personal site, Fourmilab, with free-ranging musings on topics as diverse as cryptography, nanotechnology and consciousness studies.