We don’t actually need quantum computers to have that crisis, just an algorithm that proves that P = NP.

Quantum resistant encryption is readily available today. The EU have a preferred algorithm as does the US. It just needs companies to change over to them. However. Some countries have been archiving encrypted communications from snooping operations for the day they can use quantum computers to decrypt them – national secrets and the like.

Anyone who says Y2K was a load of nothing is incredibly uneducated. The world pulled off some massive bugfixing and patching to prevent disaster in major infrastructure. Just because some office desktop pcs didn’t explode, don’t assume everything was easy.

“Y2K” wasn’t actually (even remotely) a ‘crisis’ though… so everything should be chill.

It’s important note that even switching to post-quantum cryptography isn’t going to make everything secure since all historic encrypted data that was already collected can still be decrypted.

Quantum computers could usher in a crisis worse than Y2K
The day when a quantum computer manages to break common encryption, or Q-Day, is fast approaching, and the world is not close to being ready
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2522615-quantum-computers-could-usher-in-a-crisis-worse-than-y2k/?fbclid=IwdGRjcARNTWFjbGNrBE1NLGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHrHIleI1jdGKN2b8yGxw6_rjvAbdqUoklPTbxufdiPZeOrhkN4Yir7whZTWd_aem_MnxkuDN_51gam0Hve0Tjdg&utm_id=97758_v0_s00_e0_tv1_a1demo0ecg7rma

Quantum computers could cause a global security crisis that makes the once-feared millennium bug, or Y2K, look quaint. This infamous computer risk was averted through the persistent behind-the-scenes work of engineers across the world, but whether the new threat will be tackled similarly is an urgent yet unresolved question.

Most digital communications and transactions are protected by cryptography based on mathematical problems that are unsolvable by conventional computers but are solvable by a sufficiently capable quantum computer. Researchers have understood this since the late 1990s, but the day when this capable-enough quantum computer comes online – or Q-Day – was thought to be very far in the future. Much has changed since.

Kvanttitietokoneet uhkaavat murtaa internetin nykyisen luottamusmallin. Kanadassa tähän varaudutaan jo käytännössä. Québec Cityssä on avattu uusi solmu Kirq-testialustaan, jossa kvanttiturvallista datansiirtoa testataan aidossa verkkoympäristössä.

Testialustaa operoi Numana, joka yhdistää Sherbrooken, Montréalin ja nyt Québec Cityn samaan kvanttiturvalliseen verkkosilmukkaan. Kyse ei ole laboratoriokokeesta, vaan ympäristöstä, joka vastaa oikeaa runko- ja operaattoriverkkoa.

Kvanttiuhka ei kohdistu kaikkeen salaukseen. Symmetrinen salaus, kuten AES, säilyy käyttökelpoisena. Sen sijaan kvanttikoneet pystyvät murtamaan nykyiset asymmetriset menetelmät, joilla hoidetaan avaintenvaihto ja tunnistautuminen.

Juuri tätä Kirqissa testataan. Miten RSA- ja ECC-pohjaiset ratkaisut korvataan ilman, että verkot hajoavat. Käytännössä testaus nojaa NIST:n standardoimiin PQC-algoritmeihin (post-quantum cryptography). Niitä ajetaan TLS- ja IP-verkoissa sekä hybridimalleissa, joissa klassinen ja kvanttiturvallinen salaus toimivat rinnakkain.

Microchip tuo dsPIC33A-perheeseen uuden DSC-ohjaimen, joka yhdistää nopean analogian, tarkan reaaliaikaohjauksen ja post-kvanttitietoturvan. Integraation tavoitteena on yksinkertaistaa erityisesti datakeskusten tehonmuunnosta ja moottoriohjausta. Samalla se nostaa esiin kysymyksen siitä, kuinka paljon yhdellä piirillä voidaan oikeasti korvata erilliskomponentteja.

Uusi dsPIC33AK256MPS306 laajentaa Microchipin DSC-valikoimaa suuntaan, jossa yksi ohjainpiiri hoitaa sekä ohjauksen, mittauksen että tietoturvan. Keskeinen muutos on korkean resoluution PWM:n, nopeiden ADC-muuntimien ja kryptokiihdytyksen tuominen samaan pakettiin, mikä tähtää erityisesti datakeskusten tehonsyöttöihin ja korkean taajuuden tehoelektroniikkaan.

Piiri perustuu 200 megahertsin 32-bittiseen ytimeen, jossa on liukulukuyksikkö. Analogiapuoli on poikkeuksellisen raskas: useita 40 MSPS:n 12-bittisiä AD-muuntimia, nopeita komparaattoreita ja DAC-toimintoja. Yhdistelmä mahdollistaa tiheämmät ja nopeammat säätösilmukat esimerkiksi SiC- ja GaN-pohjaisissa teholähteissä, joissa kytkentätaajuudet kasvavat.

Integraation merkitys näkyy erityisesti BOM-kustannuksissa ja layoutissa. Kun mittaus, ohjaus ja osa suojaustoiminnoista saadaan samaan piiriin, ulkoisten komponenttien määrä vähenee.

A Cryptography Engineer’s Perspective on Quantum Computing Timelines
https://words.filippo.io/crqc-timeline/

My position on the urgency of rolling out quantum-resistant cryptography has changed compared to just a few months ago. You might have heard this privately from me in the past weeks, but it’s time to signal and justify this change of mind publicly.

There had been rumors for a while of expected and unexpected progress towards cryptographically-relevant quantum computers, but over the last week we got two public instances of it.

First, Google published a paper revising down dramatically the estimated number of logical qubits and gates required to break 256-bit elliptic curves like NIST P-256 and secp256k1, which makes the attack doable in minutes on fast-clock architectures like superconducting qubits. They weirdly1 frame it around cryptocurrencies and mempools and salvaged goods or something, but the far more important implication are practical WebPKI MitM attacks.

Mayday Q Day
Google Warns That Quantum Armageddon Is Drawing Closer
The Doomsday Clock of the quantum computing world just ticked closer to midnight.
https://futurism.com/robots-and-machines/google-quantum-armageddon?fbclid=IwdGRjcAQ4Y_xjbGNrBDhjzmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHsEoeasRxF88-5ka224gfhjDAzlI2JtRu7o8TpPWWo9-cWJQIpcKvzpAZXAO_aem_GFx34jWXZ9xX3m0cYwtIxw

On Wednesday, Google said it was moving up the date it needs to prepare for when quantum computers will be able to break current encryption algorithms to 2029, catching experts off-guard.

This hypothetical turning point, called Q Day, is an ominous reminder that advances in the world of quantum computing could have seismic implications in our information age that we need to prepare for, and not all of them good.

“Quantum computers will pose a significant threat to current cryptographic standards, and specifically to encryption and digital signatures,” Google said in its Wednesday announcement, penned by Heather Adkins, Google’s VP of security engineering, and Sophie Schmieg, a senior cryptography engineer at the company.

The hypothetical point that a quantum computer would be able to solve a math problem that a classic one can’t, called quantum supremacy, is still yet to be achieved. Still, advances have been forthcoming, and experts — chief among them those at Google — have been sounding the alarm for adopting post-quantum cryptography, or PQC.

“As a pioneer in both quantum and PQC, it’s our responsibility to lead by example and share an ambitious timeline,” the Google announcement read. “By doing this, we hope to provide the clarity and urgency needed to accelerate digital transitions not only for Google, but also across the industry.”

It’s unclear, however, why Google moved up its date for Q Day, and it’s raised a few eyebrows in the field.

“That is certainly a significant acceleration/tightening of the public transition timelines we’ve seen to date, and is accelerated over even what we’ve seen the US government ask for,” Brian LaMacchia, a cryptography engineer who led Microsoft’s PQC efforts from 2015 to 2022, told Ars Technica. “The 2029 timeline is an aggressive speedup but raises the question of what’s motivating them.”

The Ars reporting flags several advances that could’ve informed Google’s decision, which have collectively dispelled the original assumption that a quantum computer would need a billion qubits to break a 2048-bit RSA key, a widely used cryptosystem. Most notable was a study Google published last June showing that a quantum computer would only need one million “noisy qubits” to crack the code, suggesting that even a cruder and still error-prone quantum machine could break in.