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c0lo [soylentnews.org] writes:

IEEE Spectrum reports [ieee.org] we are closer to the moment quantum computers will be able to crack an RSA key:

... computer scientists at MIT and the University of Innsbruck say they've assembled the first five quantum bits (qubits) of a quantum computer that could someday factor any number, and thereby crack the security of traditional encryption schemes.
...
In 2001, Isaac Chuang, an MIT physicist and electrical engineer, managed to use this algorithm to factor the number 15, but the quantum system he used could not be scaled up to factor anything more complicated... for that they’d need a type of quantum computer that stored its qubits in a stable fashion.

They turned to a quantum computer prototype called an ion trap... They needed four qubits to perform Shor’s factoring algorithm and a fifth to act as the output... Restricting the measurement step to the fifth ion kept the four involved in the computation from being corrupted.

Chuang and his collaborators found that the five-atom quantum computer successfully calculated the factors of 15. Previously, experts thought such a calculation would require at least 12 qubits to complete. Chuang says the five-ion model can be scaled up to factor much bigger numbers as long as the ion trap can hold its qubits in place. The team published its results in this week’s issue of Science [sciencemag.org].
...
“I think people are starting to get freaked out about it,” Green says. “They still think it's anywhere from 15 to 30 years away but data can last a very long time. The good news is most of the data we had doesn't have to be kept secure for 30 years, but some of it does.”
...
... Chuang expects to see quantum encryption methods that will inscribe sensitive data into the very states of atoms. “It's the kind of thing that I'm sure governments will not appreciate very much—encryption that is guaranteed by the laws of physics,” he says.

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