Despite the general-purpose quantum computing field still being in its early stages, with no immediate risk to modern cryptographic systems, scientists are increasingly exploring specialized quantum computers for potential uses — and, in the case of cybersecurity, vulnerabilities. In their recent study, Wang’s team utilized a quantum computer from Canada’s D-Wave Systems to breach cryptographic algorithms, marking a significant milestone.
According to SCMP, the research team employed the D-Wave Advantage quantum computer to target the Present, Gift-64, and Rectangle algorithms, called key representatives of the Substitution-Permutation Network (SPN) structure. This structure is foundational for advanced encryption standards (AES), a system widely deployed in military and financial encryption protocols, according to the newspaper. While AES-256 is often labeled as military-grade and considered the most secure encryption standard available, the study suggests that quantum computers may soon threaten such security
Infosec experts are throwing cold water on reports that Chinese researchers successfully cracked RSA encryption using quantum computers from D-Wave.
In a recently published paper titled "Quantum Annealing Public Key Cryptographic Attack Algorithm Based on D-Wave Advantage," academic researchers from Shanghai University described two methods to break RSA encryption. Both methods incorporate quantum annealing, an optimization process used in D-Wave systems and cloud services.
"Quantum annealing is the fundamental principle behind D-Wave special quantum computing. It has a unique quantum tunneling effect that can jump out of the local extremes that traditional intelligent algorithms are prone to fall into," the researchers wrote.
The paper – which is primarily written in Chinese – was initially published in May, but recent media reports on the research have caused a stir in the infosec community. Encryption experts say that while the research might be valid, the devil is in the details.
Where did they even find those bastard letters? And it turns out their math sucks too. Bitcoin is probably fine, these chinks don't know anything.
Frederic Jacobs, an engineer on Apple's Security Engineering and Architecture team, said in a post on Mastodon that the research hasn't changed the practical security of RSA encryption. "Yes, you have reasons to migrate away from RSA to post-quantum hybrids, but it has nothing to do with D-Wave or this algorithm," he wrote.
phew
STARKs
STARKS stands for “zero-knowledge scalable transparent argument of knowledge.” It’s a type of cryptographic proof that requires little to no interaction between the prover and the verifier. The key advantages of STARKs over SNARKs are that they have fast prover times and are easier to scale as they offer more computing power. Also, using hash functions makes them quantum resistant.
Notably, STARKs were invented by Eli Ben-Sasson, the co-founder of StarkWare, the team building StarkEx and StarkNet.
I need to read the details to judge if there's anything viable about it but this
"Quantum annealing is the fundamental principle behind D-Wave special quantum computing. It has a unique quantum tunneling effect that can jump out of the local extremes that traditional intelligent algorithms are prone to fall into," the researchers wrote.
igbo
Houston
[cringe your preliminary chenopodium]
AES is pretty much the best encryption us non-gov regular folks have access to so i'm not going to lose any sleep over this. china has been good to me, i'm not worried.
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