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from the able-to-solve-the-travelling-salesman-problem-in-just-6-years dept.
Google, NASA, and Universities Space Research Association (USRA) run a joint research lab called the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (QuAIL). That partnership has used a 512-qubit D-Wave Two quantum annealer, upgraded to the 1,152-qubit D-Wave 2x, and is now upgrading again to the company's latest D-Wave 2000Q system (2048 qubits):
Google, NASA, and the USRA are now buying the latest generation D-Wave quantum computer, as well, to further explore its potential. The new D-Wave 2000Q is not just up to 1,000 times faster than the previous generation, but it also has better controls, allowing QuAIL to tweak it for its algorithms. QuAIL is now looking at developing machine learning algorithms that can take advantage of D-Wave's latest quantum annealing computer.
[...] D-Wave also announced that it will help the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) establish a quantum computing research center for defense and intelligence purposes. D-Wave's role will be to aid the Virginia Tech staff in developing applications and software tools for its quantum annealing computers. [...] Because D-Wave is not a universal quantum computer, like what Google and IBM plan to build over the next few years, it is not expected to be useful in cracking encryption. Virginia Tech plans to also focus on developing machine learning algorithms for the D-Wave computers.
Previously: Trees Are the New Cats: D-Wave Used for Machine Vision
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:07AM (3 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography [wikipedia.org]
I used to think that quantum computers immediately broke all cryptography; it's good to know that this is not the case. Although, without good asymmetric encryption, key management becomes a huge hassle.
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:42AM
The D-Wave isn’t the sort of quantum computer that can do the kinds of calculations necessary to implement something like Shor’s Factoring Algorithm. It is capable of quantum annealing [wikipedia.org] which can be used to solve certain classes of optimisation problems only. It is not a universal quantum computer and cannot be used to simulate one, and you’d need such a thing to be able to factor, compute discrete logarithms, or do fast unordered searches using quantum algorithms. Whether D-Wave’s offerings can actually be classified as true quantum computers is debatable as is whether there is any real speed-up in using their gear that cannot be achieved using classical computers and algorithms.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @06:43AM (1 child)
Because all those symmetric algorithms are protected by either the asymmetric key exchanges you note, or by obscurity (each endpoint having preshared symmetric keys or plaintext passwords used as seeds for keys.)
While the symmetric keys are not cryptographically compromised as a result of quantum computers, their exchange mechanisms are, and could in fact be used to obtain session keys for every conversation the NSA for instance has recorded in the past 15-20 years (Assuming of course that such technology is non-existent rather than of sufficient secrecy to not have been in any of the NSA/CIA leaks of the past 5-10 years.)
For all we know these 'major leaks' we've been seeing are just a smokescreen covering up the real capabilities of the organizations, thanks to software/hardware backdoors and true quantum computing processors. By themselves or complementing each other, those two capabilities eliminate every security feature of modern hardware and render the majority of previous techniques moot for any targets utilizing updated hardware (for the built-in exploit angle) or any pre-Quantum key exchanges in the case of true Quantum Computers by themselves.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Wednesday March 15 2017, @10:43PM
Fortunately, there are smart people already looking into post-quantum asymmetric algorithms.