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Math is hard. Indeed, much of the modern infrastructure for secure communication depends heavily on the difficulty of elementary mathematics — of factoring, to be exact. It's easy to reduce a small number like 15 to its prime factors (3 x 5), but factoring numbers with a few hundred digits is still exceedingly difficult. For this reason, the RSA cryptosystem, an encryption scheme that derives its security from the difficulty of integer factorization, remains a popular tool for secure communication.
Research suggests, however, that a quantum computer would be able to factor a large number far more quickly than the best available methods today. If researchers could build a quantum computer that could outperform classical supercomputers, the thinking goes, cryptographers could use a particular algorithm called Shor's algorithm to render the RSA cryptosystem unsalvageable. The deadline to avert this may arrive sooner than we think: Google recently claimed that its quantum computers will be able to perform a calculation that's beyond the reach of any classical computer by the end of the year. In light of this, cryptographers are scrambling to find a new quantum-proof security standard.
Yet perhaps RSA isn't in as much trouble as researchers have assumed. A few weeks ago, a paper surfaced on the Cryptology ePrint Archive that asked: "Is it actually true that quantum computers will kill RSA?" The authors note that even though a quantum computer running Shor's algorithm would be faster than a classical computer, the RSA algorithm is faster than both. And the larger the RSA "key" — the number that must be factored — the greater the speed difference.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday May 16 2017, @07:04PM (1 child)
Actually no, you probably shouldn't distribute your private key along with the encrypted message.
It may not have to be transmitted in the same session, but the recipient still has to get it *somehow.*
A terrabyte, terrabit, whats the difference when thats juuuuuuuuust about cheap SSH range now and has been cheap spinning rust for some years.
Using half my hard drive to store a single key is super optimal. God forbid I want to communicate with two different people...
The terrabyte thing was just the punchline to an entire article that didn't make sense.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 16 2017, @07:40PM
RSA dates back to '77.
In '75 the Altair 8800 was release and S100 memory cards usually only held 8192 bits or 32768 bits (costing $340). Organized as bytes of course.
In about '82 my father paid about a couple hundred bucks for a mere 16K of ram to upgrade one of his machines. I remember being impressed that each 4116 dram was worth like $30 or whatever it was.
Its gonna be OK. Maybe not today. maybe not tomorrow, soon enough sure.