Quantum computing still feels like the realm of science fiction. The promise is that quantum computing can perform calculations a hundred million times faster than today's fastest supercomputer. This will have extremely positive implications for solving important scientific problems.
But that has a darker side effect: Encryption that would have taken thousands of years to crack with conventional computers could be sent in minutes or even seconds. The current implication is that adversaries can currently absorb and store data, which they can attack with a quantum computer in the next few years. Some business and personal data will remain confidential for a long time. Therefore, it is worth hardening the data to resist quantum computing attacks.
How quantum computing works
The increased performance of quantum computing over existing "Von Neumann" machines is a breakthrough that one could easily be forgiven for not believing is real. But speed is a byproduct of how quantum computing works, which is markedly different. Traditional computer chips are still based on the computer concept devised by John Von Neumann and published in 1945. In this system, each operation is performed sequentially, read from the input device, worked through logically, and then returned to storage. .
Even massively parallel supercomputers work this way. If they execute thousands of operations at the same time, the CPU core still executes each one sequentially. GPUs are simpler than CPUs, but also contain sequential units, but with much greater parallelization of many more units. Traditional computing also works with bits, which have two states, usually represented by 0 and 1. The input will be one state, and after the operation, the output will be the same or the other state. As problems become more complex, with more computational possibilities, breaking them down into individual sequential computations may mean that they are beyond the capabilities of current architectures.
This is not how quantum computers work. Instead of containing many individual computing cores to perform sequential single-bit operations in parallel, a quantum computer operates on the probability of an object's state before measuring it. Known as qubits, these states are undefined properties of an object before detection, such as the polarization of a photon or the spin of an electron. Because these quantum states have no clear position before measurement, they mix up several different possible positions at once, rather than just two.
However, while not defined until measured, these mixed states can be "entangled" with those of other objects in a mathematically related way. By applying the mathematics of this tangle to an algorithm, complex problems can essentially be solved in a single operation. For one thing, it can be used for very difficult sciences like predicting multiple particle interactions in a chemical reaction or creating security codes that are much harder to crack than current ones. But conversely, they can also be used to crack existing codes that would have been impossible to crack with today's computer technology, as they can go through many possible solutions at once.
Putting that into perspective, it would take a conventional computer around 300 billion years, 22,000 times the age of the universe, to crack the ubiquitous 2048-bit RSA encryption. But a quantum computer with 4.099 qubits would only take 10 seconds, using Shor's algorithm, which is designed to find the prime factors of an integer used in encryption keys. It is clear that there is an imminent danger to many forms of cryptography. For example, the ubiquitous SSL and TLS used to encrypt web connections use 2048-bit RSA keys and would therefore be vulnerable to breach by a quantum computer.
How fast are current quantum computers?
The good news is that we weren't there yet. Although 4099 qubits doesn't sound like much when we now have 64-core processors performing over 3 billion operations per second per core, it's still more than the most powerful quantum computer today. IBM's Eagle, unveiled in late 2021, has just 127 qubits. Google's Sycamore has just 53 qubits, China University of Science and Technology's Jiuzhang has 76 qubits, and most quantum processors (QPUs) have less than 50 qubits. There are D-Wave "quantum annealing" processors with up to 5760 qubits, but they require a limited set of possible outcomes and cannot run the Shor algorithm needed to break the encryption.
Development is progressing, however. Xanadu plans to launch a 216-qubit QPU called Borealis in 2022, and IBM aims to hit 433 qubits in 2022 with Osprey, followed by 1121 qubits with Condor in 2023. So while traditional encryption is still secure for now, it won't be for much longer. IBM's roadmap, for example, targets 4.158 qubits by 2025, making it likely that near-real-time 2.048-bit RSA cracking will be possible before 2030, which is the latest year NIST initially considered it to be. it would still be safe. You may not be able to go out and buy a quantum computing desktop by 2030: D-Wave's first commercially available quantum computer cost €15 million when it shipped in 2017. Prices will come down, but it's likely just big business and countries. . that have QPU in the next few years. However, not all of these countries will have our best interests at heart, so the danger is imminent.
Strengthening cybersecurity against quantum computing
Fortunately, it's time to prepare for the threat; for example, using security products based on post-quantum cryptography. These products can protect your sensitive data today and in the future against quantum computer attacks.
Current encryption algorithms use integer factorization, discrete logarithms, or elliptic curve discrete logarithms, which Shor's algorithm can overcome using a quantum computer. Post-quantum cryptography is moving towards alternative approaches that are not vulnerable to quantum computing. The research is still in its infancy and is based on six main methods, but products using this technology already exist. An example is QST-VPN (opens in a new tab), based on the OpenVPN library but with post-quantum secure algorithms that protect user data. The server software is delivered through the AWS Cloud, with clients for Windows, MacOS, and a wide range of Linux distributions, giving businesses the ability to start hardening their security now, rather than later. the quantum horse is gone.
Quantum computing has enormous potential to revolutionize the speed at which we can perform calculations. Like any new technological development, this has both good and bad implications. But now that we know what cybersecurity has in store for us, in the not-too-distant future, we can at least prepare for the beneficial potential of quantum computing to outweigh the more damaging possibilities.
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