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The researchers have shown that the arithmetic used in factoring numbers into their prime factors can be translated into the physics of a device—a "quantum simulator"—that physically mimics the arithmetic rather than trying to directly calculate a solution like a computer does.
Although the researchers have not yet built a quantum simulator, they show that the prime factors of large numbers would correspond to the energy values of the simulator. Measuring the energy values would then give the solutions to a given factoring problem, suggesting that factoring large numbers into primes may not be as difficult as currently thought.
"The work opens a new avenue to factor numbers, but we do not yet know about its power," Rosales told Phys.org. "It is very striking to find a completely new way to factor that comes directly from quantum physics. It does not demonstrate that factoring numbers is easy, but finding new ways to factor certainly does not add to the strength of algorithms based on its assumed complexity."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday November 29 2016, @09:33AM
Your first assertion is probably false. Prime factorization has at least not been proven to be NP-hard and it is suspected to be less complex. Your second assertion is true on the other hand: both ssh and https would fall with no implemented replacement at the moment, so that would have a huge impact. To my knowledge elliptic curve cryptography would not be dragged along, so that would be a potential alternative.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 29 2016, @11:38AM
However, the emphasis is on the "if", we really aren't making great steps maintaining a coherent quantum state of any real size at all such that the current crypto needs to be in fear of quantum computation.
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