Computer security experts have found it hard to believe a study by Chinese researchers it cites they found a way to break through the most common form of online encryption [link is paywalled] using the current generation of quantum computers.
For a long time we have been mentioning that the specific technology will pose a very serious threat.
The Financial Times reports:
The method, described in a scientific study [PDF] published in late December, could be used to crack the RSA algorithm that underpins most online encryption using a quantum machine with just 372 qubits — or quantum bits, according to 24 researchers from academic institutions and government laboratories.
Dangerous? IBM has already stated that the system The 433-qubit Osprey, the most powerful quantum computer ever publicly demonstrated, will be available to its customers from early this year.
If the research is correct, it will mark an important moment in the history of computer security, said Roger Grimes, a computer security expert and author.
“It would mean that governments could break secrets of other governments. If true – a big if – it would be like a secret straight out of the movies, and one of the biggest things in science of computers.”
Other experts say that while the theory described in the research seems sound, trying to put it into practice could well be beyond the reach of today's quantum technology.
"As far as I can tell, the paper is not wrong," said Peter Shor, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist whose 1994 algorithm proving that a quantum machine could defeat electronic encryption helped spark a research boom in quantum computing.
But Shor's method requires machines with many hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of qubits, which many experts believe is still a decade or more away.
