The research team, led by Wang Chao from Shanghai University, found that D-Wave’s quantum computers can optimize problem-solving in a way that makes it possible to attack encryption methods such as RSA.
To be clear, they factored a 22-bit RSA integer. this is impressive and noteworthy, but it doesn’t mean that RSA is fully broken yet as most RSA key-pairs are 2048 or 4096 bits.
Honestly? It really doesn’t matter that much considering the western empire basically owns the root-level chain of trust for nearly the entire internet. This is only for superpower state-level attacks, so why bother building a quantum supercomputers to crack RSA or break D-H, when you already have access to the private keys from nearly all CAs on earth? Not to mention almost no one uses anything resembling a secure OS or web browser, which is the only thing keeping your private keys secure.
Even if you’re shelling into a supersecret chinese personally-compiled openbsd VPS full of classified USDoD leaks, with your own personally managed 4096bit RSA keys with no other chain-of-trust to worry about, kicking down you door is going to be a hell of a lot cheaper and less complicated than building multi-trillion dollar gigantic secret underground quantum computers, that can, at best, break RSA in weeks instead of millennia. If that’s the case, then you better have strong disk encryption and nerves of steel. Ultimately breaking at-rest schemes and aes/(x)fish/serpent ciphers is more important.
If 4096bit RSA is somehow broken in our lifetimes, we can probably replace it with ed25519 or something more complicated and the arms race continues.
A large state breaking RSA is more-or-less a vanity project with regard to the implications.
Yes, but also it’s not looking good because theoretically this exploit could be applied over more bits with access to more qubits right? So it is only a matter of someone getting their hands on enough quantum computing cores.
But it was already theorized that this could happen, RSA had been considered unsuitable for a while now.
Exactly, this method scales with the size of the quantum computer, so we could see RSA broken within a decade. And this technique could apply to a lot of other existing algorithms. The key part to keep in mind is that there is a lot of encrypted data that has been collected already that people simply had no way to decrypt. So, there are retroactive consequences here as well.
To be clear, they factored a 22-bit RSA integer. this is impressive and noteworthy, but it doesn’t mean that RSA is fully broken yet as most RSA key-pairs are 2048 or 4096 bits.
Honestly? It really doesn’t matter that much considering the western empire basically owns the root-level chain of trust for nearly the entire internet. This is only for superpower state-level attacks, so why bother building a quantum supercomputers to crack RSA or break D-H, when you already have access to the private keys from nearly all CAs on earth? Not to mention almost no one uses anything resembling a secure OS or web browser, which is the only thing keeping your private keys secure.
Even if you’re shelling into a supersecret chinese personally-compiled openbsd VPS full of classified USDoD leaks, with your own personally managed 4096bit RSA keys with no other chain-of-trust to worry about, kicking down you door is going to be a hell of a lot cheaper and less complicated than building multi-trillion dollar gigantic secret underground quantum computers, that can, at best, break RSA in weeks instead of millennia. If that’s the case, then you better have strong disk encryption and nerves of steel. Ultimately breaking at-rest schemes and aes/(x)fish/serpent ciphers is more important.
If 4096bit RSA is somehow broken in our lifetimes, we can probably replace it with ed25519 or something more complicated and the arms race continues.
A large state breaking RSA is more-or-less a vanity project with regard to the implications.
Big caveat
Sure, it will be interesting to see how long it takes to scale up.
And currently the largest (publicly disclosed) quantum computer has 1,180 qbits.
Yes, but also it’s not looking good because theoretically this exploit could be applied over more bits with access to more qubits right? So it is only a matter of someone getting their hands on enough quantum computing cores.
But it was already theorized that this could happen, RSA had been considered unsuitable for a while now.
Exactly, this method scales with the size of the quantum computer, so we could see RSA broken within a decade. And this technique could apply to a lot of other existing algorithms. The key part to keep in mind is that there is a lot of encrypted data that has been collected already that people simply had no way to decrypt. So, there are retroactive consequences here as well.