The Clock Is Ticking On Encryption 228
CWmike writes "In the indictment that led to the expulsion of ten Russian spies from the US in the summer of 2010, the FBI said that it gained access to their communications after surreptitiously entering one of the spies' homes, during which agents found a piece of paper with a 27-character password. The FBI had found it more productive to burglarize a house than to crack a 216-bit code, despite having the computational resources of the US government behind it, writes Lamont Wood. That's because modern cryptography, when used correctly, is rock solid. Cracking an encrypted message can require time frames that dwarf the age of the universe. That's the case today. 'The entire commercial world runs off the assumption that encryption is rock solid and is not breakable,' says Joe Moorcones, vice president of information security firm SafeNet. But within the foreseeable future, cracking those same codes could become trivial, thanks to quantum computing."
Re:Quantum Encryption (Score:5, Funny)
only if you don't actually want to crack it, then quantum encryption will unlock itself, however if you want to crack it you can't.
Re:Quantum Encryption (Score:3, Funny)
Yes it will. Just because the encryption is "quantum" does not mean it's not trivially breakable with rubber hose cryptanalysis.
Re:Quantum Encryption (Score:3, Funny)
I have an algorithm that lets me factor any number with runtime complexity O(1) with a probability 1/(2^log2(n)) and can run on any system with support for /dev/random. No need for expensive quantum hardware. Preliminary tests have been able to break 4-bit RSA quite reliably. Encryption as we know it is doomed.
Where should I go to collect my grant money?
PS: You can leave the Nobel Prize next to my garden gnome. Thanks.