The Race to Shield Secrets from Quantum Computers (reuters.com) 67
An anonymous reader shared this report from Reuters:
In February, a Canadian cybersecurity firm delivered an ominous forecast to the U.S. Department of Defense. America's secrets — actually, everybody's secrets — are now at risk of exposure, warned the team from Quantum Defen5e (QD5). QD5's executive vice president, Tilo Kunz, told officials from the Defense Information Systems Agency that possibly as soon as 2025, the world would arrive at what has been dubbed "Q-day," the day when quantum computers make current encryption methods useless. Machines vastly more powerful than today's fastest supercomputers would be capable of cracking the codes that protect virtually all modern communication, he told the agency, which is tasked with safeguarding the U.S. military's communications.
In the meantime, Kunz told the panel, a global effort to plunder data is underway so that intercepted messages can be decoded after Q-day in what he described as "harvest now, decrypt later" attacks, according to a recording of the session the agency later made public. Militaries would see their long-term plans and intelligence gathering exposed to enemies. Businesses could have their intellectual property swiped. People's health records would be laid bare... One challenge for the keepers of digital secrets is that whenever Q-day comes, quantum codebreakers are unlikely to announce their breakthrough. Instead, they're likely to keep quiet, so they can exploit the advantage as long as possible.
The article adds that "a scramble is on to protect critical data. Washington and its allies are working on new encryption standards known as post-quantum cryptography... Beijing is trying to pioneer quantum communications networks, a technology theoretically impossible to hack, according to researchers...
"In a quantum communications network, users exchange a secret key or code on subatomic particles called photons, allowing them to encrypt and decrypt data. This is called quantum key distribution, or QKD."
In the meantime, Kunz told the panel, a global effort to plunder data is underway so that intercepted messages can be decoded after Q-day in what he described as "harvest now, decrypt later" attacks, according to a recording of the session the agency later made public. Militaries would see their long-term plans and intelligence gathering exposed to enemies. Businesses could have their intellectual property swiped. People's health records would be laid bare... One challenge for the keepers of digital secrets is that whenever Q-day comes, quantum codebreakers are unlikely to announce their breakthrough. Instead, they're likely to keep quiet, so they can exploit the advantage as long as possible.
The article adds that "a scramble is on to protect critical data. Washington and its allies are working on new encryption standards known as post-quantum cryptography... Beijing is trying to pioneer quantum communications networks, a technology theoretically impossible to hack, according to researchers...
"In a quantum communications network, users exchange a secret key or code on subatomic particles called photons, allowing them to encrypt and decrypt data. This is called quantum key distribution, or QKD."
Still unsure (Score:3)
I am still not sure that *useful* quantum computing is nothing more than a grift, no matter how much resources are thrown at the problem.
Re:Still unsure (Score:4, Insightful)
And it's also possible that someone somewhere is already using it to decrypt saved messages. Probably only a nation state would have the resources to do this, but they're out there. I doubt there's been any secret breakthrough, but if there was we wouldn't know about it (yet).
I am, however, convinced that quantum computing will have serious applications in the future, we just don't know what they are because they don't exist yet.
Kind of like how in 1960 no one had ever heard of a 'Senior Cloud Architect' or a 'Web Application Firewall Engineer' because those jobs didn't exist yet either, but I suspect in 10 to 15 years there'll be more than a few actual 'quantum related' jobs out there.
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So don't protect your sooper sekrit data using public key key exchanges. If you're sending your plans for invading Cuba as plain text over https you're doing it wrong.
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Re: Still unsure (Score:3)
I think he means if it is really important you have at least symmetric encryption with a preshared key.
Still, such solutions do not scale.
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Our current asymmetric encryption algorithms, RSA and elliptic curves, are potentially vulnerable to quantum computers. Our symmetric algorithms, like AES, are not.
If you send secret plans as plain text over https then the actual data is encrypted using a symmetric algorithm but the key exchange is done using an asymmetric one. The ghost of Castro just needs to break the asymmetric encryption, get the symmetric key, and decrypt the plans.
If you use a reasonable asymmetric algorithm to encrypt your message y
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LOL in 20 years time "jobs" won't exist.
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The guy who comes to repair your toilet when it's fucked will be making plenty of money - sadly, you won't be able to afford him.
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And it's also possible that someone somewhere is already using it to decrypt saved messages.
It is not. The technology is not there, and the days in which three-letter-agencies had access to technologies many years ahead of those available to the public are long gone. You are just indulging in conspiracy theories.
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And it's also possible that someone somewhere is already using it to decrypt saved messages.
It is not. The technology is not there, and the days in which three-letter-agencies had access to technologies many years ahead of those available to the public are long gone. You are just indulging in conspiracy theories.
I don't think the quantum tech is there yet either, but the idea that TLAs will get the ability ahead of everyone else is not "indulging in conspiracy theories". First, they have access to everything happening in the public space and in the commercial world, public or not. In addition they have billions of dollars of black budget money to invest in exploiting and extending all of that tech in secret, and the privileged position of a government spy agency. The first organization on the planet to have an oper
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It is not. The technology is not there, and the days in which three-letter-agencies had access to technologies many years ahead of those available to the public are long gone.
Found the secret undercover government operative trying to deflect the narrative.
Who do you actually work for, RUs1729, if that even is your real name?
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Grift means a petty or small scale swindle. It doesn't mean "it was a neat idea, we tried, and it turned out not to work." Nor does it mean "massive fraud."
I know it sounds cool and edgy on the Internet, but quantum computing is not a grift, whether it ultimately works or not, or whether or not you think the thousands of researchers who work on it somehow know that it's not going to work.
Re: Still unsure (Score:2)
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"Which, let's face it, will probably be most of them." Don't understand much about agency procurement, do you. There are a lot of interlocking pieces that have to fall into place for any procurement, and now security is one of them. Snake oil salesmen are easily ferreted out with the internal controls.
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The fascinating aspect to me is how easy it is to swindle the majority of the public. The public has been provided zero actual evidence (that we can understand) that quantum computing has any utility at all. None. And yet the idea lives on – and even gains more adherents. This does not mean that QC will never happen – only that the public has no evidence that it will. The only “evidence”, if you will, is that lots of people that have proclaimed themselves experts incessantly rep
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race for billions in DoD contracts (Score:2)
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Yep, probably. Because "quantum Computing" has now consistently failed to deliver for over 40 years. And there is no sane reason to believe this will change.
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Yep, probably. Because "quantum Computing" has now consistently failed to deliver for over 40 years. And there is no sane reason to believe this will change.
Never is an awfully long time, and sanity is, well rather objective. I, for one, would put my money on the apes that came down out of the trees, conquered a planet, communicate via devices in their pockets via satellites and launched themselves into space, landed on the moon and sent drones to Mars. That sounds pretty insane.
Unless your "never" assumes we will destroy ourselves before attaining that technological achievement. Probably even money on that one.
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ugh. subjective
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"Never" here assumes prohibitive effort. There are natural limits to physical things. Unless elementary things like conservation of energy go out the window, there can be thing that could be theoretically built, but not practically. Usually you get than when scaling is inverse exponential or higher-order inverse polynomial. There is every indication QCs are the former.
Yes, I get that this exceeds the capability for imagining things of many people. Does not make the statement any less true.
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there can be thing that could be theoretically built, but not practically. There is every indication QCs are the former.
Happy to read any links you would provide to support that statement.
However, take a step back and widen your perspective:
The following were thought to be "impossible": powered human flight, landing a man on the moon, quantum computing, wireless transmission, organ transplants, gene editing, VR and, of course, the internet. Each of these were either outright laughed at, thought to be impossible to achieve and/or, at some point, only mentioned in sci-fi novels.
Also, there is a larger point here and it relates
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The following were thought to be "impossible": powered human flight, landing a man on the moon, quantum computing, wireless transmission, organ transplants, gene editing, VR and, of course, the internet. Each of these were either outright laughed at, thought to be impossible to achieve and/or, at some point, only mentioned in sci-fi novels.
If your metric is that any technology that someone somewhere thought was impossible makes the technology possible, that means that everything that can be conceived is not only possible, but that someone somewhere thinking it is impossible is a critical part of it being possible.
What's more, gwehir said theoretically possible, not impossible. And there are plenty enough things that are possible but not practical. I'm pretty sure that if we wanted to, we could build a 8 lane highway from New York City to P
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> Never is an awfully long time, and sanity is, well rather objective. I, for one, would put my money on the apes that came down out of the trees, conquered a planet, communicate via devices in their pockets via satellites and launched themselves into space, landed on the moon and sent drones to Mars. That sounds pretty insane.
Have the apes gotten the perpetual motion machine working yet? Theyve been at it for longer than quantum computing.
surely, you wouldnt bet against the apes, not matter how unattain
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"Best way to secure billions of payola in defense contracts is to scare the shit out the old codgers running the place." Most military procurement is done via DoD partnership with business. Right now that is under intense scrutiny now that DoD has an audit system nearly all in place. Any large contract these days has its genesis within DoD and any any contract has controls for cost overruns and failure to deliver to spec.
you will know it has happened (Score:2)
Another story (Score:3)
Didn't I just recently read another story that some CEO said "inventing a crisis" is the smart thing to do if you want to keep the money flowing. Hmmm...
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Makes a lot of sense, yes. And there are always tons of people with no fact-checking ability that will believe any rap as long as it aligns somewhat with their views.
Depending on what article you read.. (Score:2)
Quantum computing is very far away because error correction is hard or a threat is imminent
Looks like someone is looking for funding
Re:Depending on what article you read.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Error correction is hard. Keeping entanglement is hard. Establishing entanglement is hard. And a few other things.
Any sane evaluation will conclude that effort for Quantum Computations goes up exponentially with number of effective (!) Qbits. That means it will never reach any larger sizes. Given than breaking RAS-4096 (the current recommendation for longer-term security) takes about 16k effective (!) Qbits that must stay entangled during a long and complex calculation, and that current maximum size after 50 years of research are at 50 (!) or so effective Qbiots that can only do very short calculations and need a lot of tries for even that, it is reasonable to expect this will never be in reach.
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Note to moderators: "I do not like reality" is not a valid reason to down-mod.
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Most of Slashdot is already at an age where reality is a threat.
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Yes, probably.
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For current approaches. But there are a lot of new approaches being researched, at great expense to investors. I think it's pretty stupid to assume we'll never change that equation.
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I think you do not understand the Physics of the matter. The very likely inverse exponential scaling is based on Physics and not a limitation of the actual engineering implementation. Hence no "new approach" will overcome it.
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OK buddy.
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Occam's Razor applies here I think. Someone is just looking to pump up their readership.
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Error correction and decoherence: the best QCs currently can keep their qubits in a coherent state for a few milliseconds, at best. In order to tackle cryptographic problems of interest you would need to increase this by six orders of magnitude or so. Even if the technology were there for the hundreds of thousands of qubits required for the job - something that is not even in the horizon - if they decohere in less than a second you'll able to do precious little with them. There has been far less progress on
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and ChatGPT and friends, the jewel in the crown of the current AI efforts, while useful, are, on a dispassionate analysis, far less impressive than what many would have us believe.
We are something like two-three years into this LLM thing, and GPT-4 is scoring at 94th percentile on SAT. You don't call that impressive? And what weve seen is just the beginning - give it 10 more years....
I would predict (Score:2)
I would predict that half the comments would be to the effect "this may/will probably never happen, so why bother?" but that's already happened.
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What has happened? Working QCs or reasonable size? Nope to both.
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Where in the article did anyone say the line has already been crossed?
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TFA is quoting a snake-oil peddler who is talking about "quantum computing" as if it is mature technology that is commonly available.
Great, more bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no "race" to "fight" the effects of "Quantum Computers". Why? Simple: There are no real quantum computers. There are a few tiny experimental set-ups with so few effective Qbits that my 30 year old programmable pocket calculator leaves them in the dust. And since scaling these things very likely comes with exponential effort, since they scale badly in several dimensions, there likely is a pretty hard practical upper bound for their size anyways, that is very likely far below what a modern PC can do.
What is there is the NSA and other scum trying to get people to adopt insecure crypto. In the last quantum-crypto competition, a finalist (!) got broken in a very short time on a regular laptop. That is so massively bad that it is not even funny anymore.
Pitch by press release. (Score:2)
I'm a cynical old codger... I read this and thought here's a pitch to get more VC cash flowing in. :-/
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No need to be cynical. That is just objectively the most likely explanation for these irrational claims.
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I like to blame irresponsible journalism.
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Definitely a factor. When everything has to be earth-shattering, truth does not play a real role anymore.
Doesnt this only apply to certain encryption algos (Score:2)
I admit I know only a smattering about quantum computing (I read one book about it, which is probably out of date by now), but my impression was that only a few particular encryption algorithms were considered potentially vulnerable to being cracked by a quantum computer, and that those algorithms had already been deprecated in favor of newer algorithms ("elliptical curve encryption" IIRC) that would not be vulnerable to a quantum computer, in the event anyone ever gets one working.
So, has that changed and
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What bullshit! (Score:2)
We can't factor big numbers using quantum computers without "precompiling them" down to qbits. That is essentially knowing the number beforehand and then feeding that into the quantum computer. So yeah.