The advance was incremental at best. So why did so many think it was a breakthrough?

As a reminder, current estimates are that quantum cracking of a single 2048-bit RSA key would require a computer with 20 million qubits running in superposition for about eight hours. For context, quantum computers maxed out at 433 qubits in 2022 and 1,000 qubits last year. (A qubit is a basic unit of quantum computing, analogous to the binary bit in classical computing. Comparisons between qubits in true quantum systems and quantum annealers aren’t uniform.) So even when quantum computing matures sufficiently to break vulnerable algorithms, it could take decades or longer before the majority of keys are cracked.

The upshot of this latest episode is that while quantum computing will almost undoubtedly topple many of the most widely used forms of encryption used today, that calamitous event won’t happen anytime soon. It’s important that industries and researchers move swiftly to devise quantum-resistant algorithms and implement them widely. At the same time, people should take steps not to get steamrolled by the PQC hype train.

  • MalReynolds@slrpnk.netEnglish
    162·
    9 hours ago

    And everyone thinks about real time implications, what about historical ? Seems pretty likely that the NSA has been storing an appreciable fraction of the internet for a long damn while. Come Q-Day that all gets opened and searchable. What would Trump do ?

    • azuth@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      29 minutes ago

      Nothing, he will be dead. Anyone that NSA would bother to use their new and expensive quantum machines on will be an organization that should know better than to be compromised by decades old secrets getting out.

  • Optional@lemmy.worldEnglish
    131·
    10 hours ago

    Man, quantum computers has been about-to-break-encryption since the 90s. The hype never ends, just a new crop of people first hear it then figure out it’s bullshit.

    • T156@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 hours ago

      Not to mention we already have quantum-computer-resistant cryptography.

    • Dave@lemmy.nzEnglish
      3·
      6 hours ago

      But isn’t the point that we just need to stay ahead of it. Surely encryption used in the 90s could be broken by a quantum computer today?

        • Dave@lemmy.nzEnglish
          3·
          4 hours ago

          It seems the RSA-155 (512 bit) encryption commonly used in the 90s was broken in 1999, no quantum needed (due to it being based on primes).

          Though from what I can search up, reddit users from 10 years ago were confident a 128 bit modern algorithm (e.g. AES) would never be able to be brute forced, even by quantum computers.

          I dunno, sometimes I wonder if not everyone on the internet is an expert.

  • Mike1576218English
    32·
    13 hours ago

    If qbits double every year, we’re at 20 million in 15 years. Changing crypto takes a very long time on some systems. If we’re at ~20000 in 5 years, we better have usable post quantum in place to start mitigations.

    But I’m not convinced yet, we’ll have those numbers then. Especially error free qbits…

    • humblebun@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      11·
      11 hours ago

      If qbits double every year

      And then we need to increase coherence time, which is 50ms for the current 433 qubits large chip. Error correction might work, but might not

      • WolfLink@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        7 hours ago

        Error correction does fix that problem but at the cost of increasing the number of qubits needed by a factor of 10x to 100x or so.

        • humblebun@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          22·
          2 hours ago

          But who guarantees that ec will overcome decoherence, introduced by this number of qbits? Not a trivial question that nobody can answer for certain

          • WolfLink@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            2 hours ago

            I mean the known theory of quantum error correction already guarantees that as long as your physical qubits are of sufficient quality, you can overcome decoherence by trading quantity for quality.

            It’s true that we’re not yet at the point where we can mass produce qubits of sufficient quality, but claiming that EC is not known to work is a weird way to phrase it at best.

            • humblebun@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              11·
              1 hour ago

              It was shown this year for how many, 47 qbits to scale? How could you be certain this will stand for millions and billions?

    • humblebun@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      8·
      13 hours ago

      Ok, I decided to dive into it today again and look what I’ve found:

      1. They still demonstrate supremacy to each other proving that their setup couldn’t be simulated. These 433 and 1000 qubit processors are good only for one purpose: to simulate itself.

      2. Photonic QC still estimates hafnian billions times faster; if only this mathematical structure appeared to have any practical meaning

      3. They demonstrated that toric codes might be effective