01 January 2023

In a recent announcement, Chinese researchers “suggested” they had broken RSA encryption with fewer qubits than previously predicted.  I say suggested vs reported because they indicate that they can do it but need more processing power than they currently have.  For now. 

Don’t panic – it’s likely that this is not yet reality.  But it could be.  And it most definitely is taking us one step closer than previously thought possible in this timeline. 

See the link https://techmonitor.ai/hardware/quantum-encryption-rsa-cryptography for an excellent and more in-depth description of what happened, but for this blog post I think it’s relevant to talk about what’s next.  Post Quantum Cryptology is something we should pay more attention to at this point.

What is Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC)?  It’s encryption that answers the problem introduced by more powerful computing.  Most encryption today relies on being so burdensome to guess (or crack), that it is not reasonable to even try because it would take far more time and resources than whatever you’re trying to guess is worth.  One measure is called “Polynomial” time. 

From Ryan’s article referenced above “Polynomial time refers to the amount of time it takes for an algorithm to solve a problem, and is generally considered to be good running time for a given algorithm, meaning it can scale to large input sizes without taking an impractically long time to complete.”

A quantum computer can make cracking current encryption algorithms, much much faster than current processing allows for a reasonable time and cost.  That’s the unrealized promise at this point.  But it’s coming.  It’s just a matter of when.

Enter PQC. Nobody really knows what the transition will look like.  Will we go from nothing to a massive switch to quantum computing so we can encrypt safely?  Will we immediately start sending information in the clear?  Will there be an intermediate step and network equipment will be upgraded to quantum computing?

One thing is certain.  We’ll need new solutions as quantum computing becomes more and more mainstream.

For more on PQC, check out these links:

https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/pqc-dig-sig/standardization/call-for-proposals

https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/nistir/8413/final

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/uk-quantum-strategy-call-for-evidence

https://www.japan.go.jp/kizuna/2022/05/cutting_edge_of_quantum_technology.html