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Expert says the focus on quantum attacks may distract us from more immediate threats:
Three weeks ago, panic swept across some corners of the security world after researchers discovered a breakthrough that, at long last, put the cracking of the widely used RSA encryption scheme within reach by using quantum computing.
Scientists and cryptographers have known for two decades that a factorization method known as Shor's algorithm makes it theoretically possible for a quantum computer with sufficient resources to break RSA. That's because the secret prime numbers that underpin the security of an RSA key are easy to calculate using Shor's algorithm. Computing the same primes using classical computing takes billions of years.
[...]
The paper, published three weeks ago by a team of researchers in China, reported finding a factorization method that could break a 2,048-bit RSA key using a quantum system with just 372 qubits when it operated using thousands of operation steps. The finding, if true, would have meant that the fall of RSA encryption to quantum computing could come much sooner than most people believed.
At the Enigma 2023 Conference in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday, computer scientist and security and privacy expert Simson Garfinkel assured researchers that the demise of RSA was greatly exaggerated. For the time being, he said, quantum computing has few, if any, practical applications.
"In the near term, quantum computers are good for one thing, and that is getting papers published in prestigious journals," Garfinkel, co-author with Chris Hoofnagle of the 2021 book Law and Policy for the Quantum Age, told the audience. "The second thing they are reasonably good at, but we don't know for how much longer, is they're reasonably good at getting funding."
Previously: Breaking RSA With a Quantum Computer
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Saturday January 28 2023, @01:00AM (2 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws#The_laws [wikipedia.org]
Well, so some quantum whatever is greatly exaggerated, until it is not.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Saturday January 28 2023, @07:58AM (1 child)
Simson is a pragmatist, the cryptographers pushing PQC are almost entirely academics in search of funding and publication credit. There are actually quite a few crypto people out there who can explain in some detail why the great quantum scare is bollocks, but they're almost always drowned out by the people shouting that the sky is falling and we need to adopt this snazzy new post-quantum algorithm they've just invented.
Surprised to see him given air time actually... oh, it was Enigma. He'd never get away with this at any of the Crypto/Eurocrypt/Asiacrypt/etc venues.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Saturday January 28 2023, @08:43AM
I believe that you don't have to worry about it, nor do I. But there are people who do have to worry.
If I were working for an intelligence agency, I'd be very worried about it. Secrets that get encrypted today may still be highly relevant in 30 years, and those who are interested in them are willing to invest a lot of money. Not to mention that a new algorithm needs time to build enough trust. Only a fool would already use an algorithm published this year to protect important secrets.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.