https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/blog/2019/11/06/google-claim-to-quantum-supremacy-what-does-it-mean-for-cybersecurity/ #quantumcomputing #cryptography #infosec #research #innovation #physics

Computer giants are racing to build the first quantum computer, a device with millions of times more processing strength than all the computers currently on Earth combined.

VICE’s Taylor Wilson meets the scientists at the cutting edge of this new age of computing.

Google and NASA have demonstrated that quantum computing isn’t just a fancy trick, but almost certainly something actually useful — and they’re already working on commercial applications. What does that mean for existing startups and businesses? Simply put: nothing. But that doesn’t mean you can ignore it forever.

1. It’ll be a long time before anything really practical comes out of quantum computing.

2. Early applications will be incredibly domain-specific and not generalizable.

How a quantum computer could break 2048-bit RSA encryption in 8 hours
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613596/how-a-quantum-computer-could-break-2048-bit-rsa-encryption-in-8-hours/

A new study shows that quantum technology will catch up with today’s encryption standards much sooner than expected. That should worry anybody who needs to store data securely for 25 years or so.

So computer scientists have attempted to calculate the resources such a quantum computer might need and then work out how long it will be until such a machine can be built. And the answer has always been decades.

Today, that thinking needs to be revised thanks to the work of Craig Gidney at Google in Santa Barbara and Martin Ekerå at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. These guys have found a more efficient way for quantum computers to perform the code-breaking calculations, reducing the resources they require by orders of magnitude.

Consequently, these machines are significantly closer to reality than anyone suspected. The result will make uncomfortable reading for governments, military and security organizations, banks, and anyone else who needs to secure data for 25 years or longer.

practically impossible for a classical computer to factor numbers that are longer than 2048 bits, which is the basis of the most commonly used form of RSA encryption.

Shor showed that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could do this with ease

noise becomes a significant problem for large quantum computers. And the best way currently to tackle noise is to use error-correcting codes that require significant extra qubits themselves

Now Gidney and Ekerå have shown how a quantum computer could do the calculation with just 20 million qubits. Indeed, they show that such a device would take just eight hours to complete the calculation. “[As a result], the worst case estimate of how many qubits will be needed to factor 2048 bit RSA integers has dropped nearly two orders of magnitude,” they say.

Indeed, security experts have developed post-quantum codes that even a quantum computer will not be able to crack.

For ordinary people, there is little risk. Most people use 2048-bit encryption

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/420287/1978-cryptosystem-resists-quantum-attack/

quantum computing really exist? It’s fitting that for decades this field has been haunted by the fundamental uncertainty of whether it would, eventually, prove to be a wild goose chase. But Google has collapsed this nagging superposition with research not just demonstrating what’s called “quantum supremacy,” but more importantly showing that this also is only the very beginning of what quantum computers will eventually be capable of.