As private industry and governments get closer to building useful quantum computers, the algorithms protecting Bitcoin wallets, encrypted web visits, and other sensitive secrets will be useless. No one doubts the day will come, but as the now-common joke in cryptography circles observes, experts have been forecasting this cryptocalypse will arrive in the next 15 to 30 years for the past 30 years.
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One exception to the industry-wide lethargy is the engineering team that designs the Signal Protocol, the open source engine that powers the world’s most robust and resilient form of end-to-end encryption for multiple private chat apps, most notably the Signal Messenger. Eleven days ago, the nonprofit entity that develops the protocol, Signal Messenger LLC, published a 5,900-word write-up describing its latest updates that make Signal fully quantum-resistant.
So I have very very limited knowledge in this realm, but have gotten to speak to people who are very heavily involved in the field. The "30 years from now" thing I've heard, but I've also heard...
So I have very very limited knowledge in this realm, but have gotten to speak to people who are very heavily involved in the field.
The "30 years from now" thing I've heard, but I've also heard it's not really that hard to solve (comparatively) and is something they've been aware of/taking seriously since the early 2000's? Like Y2K the biggest issue will be adoption, and unlike Y2K, there's not a super obvious "YOU MUST ADOPT BY THIS DATE OR ELSE" deadline, so there's a bit of back and forth as to when it will be worth the time.
So while I find the article interesting, it does seem to be sensationalizing the problem/progress. I last had any real conversation about this around 2014ish and the vibe was "don't believe the hype" in that while quantum IS going to be a thing, it's a very specific and niche thing.
It does have obvious attack vectors and what not, and maybe like log jam there's some state actor that's WAY ahead of the game and abusing it in specific scenarios as we speak, but I feel like this is going to be a lot more akin to http to https where it will adopt over time with some major moves as big players (government) adopt. For most it'll be "oh fuck right I need to update that library and make sure it doesn't pop a breaking change with some API that didn't adopt"
For what it's worth I think the article does a decent enough job of explaining the concepts ( visuals are always nice), but personally it's struck me as odd that everyone focuses just cryptography when I feel like large scale quantum computing might hammer a lot more. If you can't do elliptic curve encryption because this new computer can beat the hell out of that type of math...doesn't that have massive ramifications for the field as a whole with probably impossible to foresee downstream effects?
Not that 1+1 won't equal 2 anymore or anything, but that you're going to have an entire renaissance of brute force solutions and the like that weren't possible to test before?
There is a company that raised a billion dollars to build a quantum computer in two years. I’m not sure I believe it since these things usually take longer than they expect and it seems like a...
There is a company that raised a billion dollars to build a quantum computer in two years. I’m not sure I believe it since these things usually take longer than they expect and it seems like a risky bet. But I also don’t know enough about quantum computing to be sure that it will take at least five years. Scientific progress seems quite hard to predict?
I’m hoping to find articles written by experts about this.
Also, I don’t know what the positive implications of practical quantum computing would be, so it would be good to find articles about that, too.
OpenSSH is also being more vocal about it with v10.1: https://www.openssh.com/pq.html
OpenSSH is also being more vocal about it with v10.1:
To encourage migration to these stronger algorithms, OpenSSH 10.1 will warn the user when a non post-quantum key agreement scheme is selected, with the following message:
** WARNING: connection is not using a post-quantum key exchange algorithm.
** This session may be vulnerable to "store now, decrypt later" attacks.
** The server may need to be upgraded. See https://openssh.com/pq.html
That page has a great explanation & FAQ section, thanks for sharing! … I have a feeling it’ll be especially useful to send to the “why should I bother” types of users.
Well I'm also of the opinion that updating is good but not super urgent. On Fedora it looks like /etc/crypto-policies/back-ends/opensshserver.config hasn't updated yet so I'll just wait until the...
Well I'm also of the opinion that updating is good but not super urgent. On Fedora it looks like
Very very very cool, thanks so much for sharing. My cryptography knowledge is pretty rusty and outdated (I read Simon Singh's The Code Book like 15+ years ago) so most of this was over my head,...
Very very very cool, thanks so much for sharing. My cryptography knowledge is pretty rusty and outdated (I read Simon Singh's The Code Book like 15+ years ago) so most of this was over my head, but it was still a great read.
What a great, well written, understandable explanation. I didn't expect to finish the article when I started it, but I'm glad I did. I heard about SPQR before and it's nice to see the evolution of...
What a great, well written, understandable explanation. I didn't expect to finish the article when I started it, but I'm glad I did. I heard about SPQR before and it's nice to see the evolution of the process that produced it
From the article:
...
So I have very very limited knowledge in this realm, but have gotten to speak to people who are very heavily involved in the field.
The "30 years from now" thing I've heard, but I've also heard it's not really that hard to solve (comparatively) and is something they've been aware of/taking seriously since the early 2000's? Like Y2K the biggest issue will be adoption, and unlike Y2K, there's not a super obvious "YOU MUST ADOPT BY THIS DATE OR ELSE" deadline, so there's a bit of back and forth as to when it will be worth the time.
So while I find the article interesting, it does seem to be sensationalizing the problem/progress. I last had any real conversation about this around 2014ish and the vibe was "don't believe the hype" in that while quantum IS going to be a thing, it's a very specific and niche thing.
It does have obvious attack vectors and what not, and maybe like log jam there's some state actor that's WAY ahead of the game and abusing it in specific scenarios as we speak, but I feel like this is going to be a lot more akin to http to https where it will adopt over time with some major moves as big players (government) adopt. For most it'll be "oh fuck right I need to update that library and make sure it doesn't pop a breaking change with some API that didn't adopt"
For what it's worth I think the article does a decent enough job of explaining the concepts ( visuals are always nice), but personally it's struck me as odd that everyone focuses just cryptography when I feel like large scale quantum computing might hammer a lot more. If you can't do elliptic curve encryption because this new computer can beat the hell out of that type of math...doesn't that have massive ramifications for the field as a whole with probably impossible to foresee downstream effects?
Not that 1+1 won't equal 2 anymore or anything, but that you're going to have an entire renaissance of brute force solutions and the like that weren't possible to test before?
There is a company that raised a billion dollars to build a quantum computer in two years. I’m not sure I believe it since these things usually take longer than they expect and it seems like a risky bet. But I also don’t know enough about quantum computing to be sure that it will take at least five years. Scientific progress seems quite hard to predict?
I’m hoping to find articles written by experts about this.
Also, I don’t know what the positive implications of practical quantum computing would be, so it would be good to find articles about that, too.
OpenSSH is also being more vocal about it with v10.1:
https://www.openssh.com/pq.html
That page has a great explanation & FAQ section, thanks for sharing!
… I have a feeling it’ll be especially useful to send to the “why should I bother” types of users.
Well I'm also of the opinion that updating is good but not super urgent. On Fedora it looks like
hasn't updated yet so I'll just wait until the system does it for me
Tuta, encrypted email service out of Germany, completed a similar overhaul last year.
Very very very cool, thanks so much for sharing. My cryptography knowledge is pretty rusty and outdated (I read Simon Singh's The Code Book like 15+ years ago) so most of this was over my head, but it was still a great read.
What a great, well written, understandable explanation. I didn't expect to finish the article when I started it, but I'm glad I did. I heard about SPQR before and it's nice to see the evolution of the process that produced it