Why Quantum Computers Might Not Break Cryptography
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Why Quantum Computers Might Not Break Cryptography
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Re: Why Quantum Computers Might Not Break Cryptography
#2That is an interesting argument... Today we assume RSA is "Safe" because we can guess the maximum computational power of an attacker, and using a key size that makes cracking the key an unfavorable avenue for attack.
He's merely suggesting the same thing: use a really large key (terabit size), and since quantum computers are quite exotic, it will be an unfavorable avenue of attack.
Re: Why Quantum Computers Might Not Break Cryptography
#3There are post-quantum public key algorithms which are much more efficient than terabit-size RSA.
Re: Why Quantum Computers Might Not Break Cryptography
#4TLDR; RSA keys can be generated large enough (1TB was the example in the article) that it would still take an inordinate amount of time to brute force, in spite of the potential speed advantages available to the quantum computer.
Re: Why Quantum Computers Might Not Break Cryptography
#5TLDR; RSA keys can be generated large enough (1TB was the example in the article) that it would still take an inordinate amount of time to brute force, in spite of the potential speed advantages available to the quantum computer.
Are 1TB keys still secure?
I seem to recall that some schemes have issues with keys being too large because of things like prime scarcity.
Re: Why Quantum Computers Might Not Break Cryptography
#6That is an interesting argument... Today we assume RSA is "Safe" because we can guess the maximum computational power of an attacker, and using a key size that makes cracking the key an unfavorable avenue for attack. He's merely suggesting the same thing: use a really large key (terabit size), and since quantum computers are quite exotic, it will be an unfavorable avenue of attack.
We can't even get people off SHA1 to SHA2 "because of lower performance." Somehow I doubt the "1 terrabit RSA key" would go over well with them.
I think there's a much better chance we move off to still slower, but not as slow, quantum-resistant crypto algorithms, than just much larger RSA keys.
Re: Why Quantum Computers Might Not Break Cryptography
#7If I had a quantum computer that was capable of breaking RSA, I wouldn't tell anyone. The whole point is to be able to spy on people, and you wouldn't be able to do that if everyone knew that RSA was broken.
I don't know if quantum computers exist, but I'm sure once they do, the people who build them will keep them secret.
Re: Why Quantum Computers Might Not Break Cryptography
#8So... what is the argument exactly? That quantum computers won't be fast enough to break a key that's larger than most people's hard drives and would be utterly useless in practice?
Re: Why Quantum Computers Might Not Break Cryptography
#9If I had a quantum computer that was capable of breaking RSA, I wouldn't tell anyone. The whole point is to be able to spy on people, and you wouldn't be able to do that if everyone knew that RSA was broken. I don't know if quantum computers exist, but I'm sure once they do, the people who build them will keep them secret.
> I don't know if quantum computers exist, but I'm sure once they do, the people who build them will keep them secret.
They not only do exist but have already successfully factorized low magnitude numbers [0]. The question is if an agency with a high enough budget, secrecy and highly qualified personnel did not already scale up the reliability and capacity of existing technology.
Re: Why Quantum Computers Might Not Break Cryptography
#10It always seemed to me that people would use the same available computing power to generate the keys. As the ability to crack them will always be an order of magnitude higher than what was used to create them.