When I first read reports of quantum factoring algorithms [2], I remember a chill down my spine. We were just booting up the Internet, but everything we were doing was obsolete already.
What I saw immediately is that, when quantum computing gets good enough, it will be possible to not only snoop on conversations, it will be possible to crack any data that has ever been encrypted with conventional methods. And most of the data will be easy to crack.
Which means that all the secrets on the Internet, all the passwords, all financial transactions, everything, will be effectively unencrypted.
The day is not here yet, but it is coming.
"Q Day".
This winter, Davigd Lauge reports that, as they race to build up quantum computing capacity, the US and China (and probably others), are hoovering up all the encrypted data they can manage, assuming that it will be crackable in the future [1]. "Harvest now, decrypt later."
Note that the rush to boot up "post quantum cryptography" only protects new data, encrypted with the new methods. Old data, encrypted with old methods, will be increasingly vulnerable in the coming decades. (The same is true for quantum secured networks.) (And for blockchains.)
Shiver!
- David Lauge, U.S. and China race to shield secrets from quantum computers, in Reuters - Investigations, December 14, 2023. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/us-china-tech-quantum/
- P. W. Shor. Algorithms for quantum computation: discrete logarithms and factoring. In Proceedings 35th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, 1994, 124-134. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/365700
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