A quantum computer from Google solved a task that the best supercomputer in the world cannot. The news made quite a splash \u2014 and then, the report was retracted.<\/p>\n
The retraction, which the Financial Times<\/a><\/em> discovered on NASA\u2019s website, only added more suspense to the situation. So, although exactly what task the quantum computer allegedly solved \u2014 not to mention how many qubits it deployed, 53 or 72 \u2014 remains uncertain, it\u2019s actually very likely that the so-called quantum supremacy has indeed arrived. Bear with me and I\u2019ll explain what makes me think so.<\/p>\n Last year, impressed by the amount of attention post-quantum cryptography received at the RSA conference, we estimated<\/a> that quantum supremacy could arrive toward the end of 2019. We took a simple estimate of the time required by quantum computers and supercomputers to factor the prime numbers for a 512-bit RSA encryption algorithm. These estimates are very close to reports \u2014 3 minutes 20 seconds and approximately 10,000 years, respectively. So, does that mean our forecast was accurate?<\/p>\n It sounds like yes given the recent news. However, no one has (yet) had a thousand years to wait for a supercomputer calculation. But that\u2019s not the most important thing here. It looks like time\u2019s up for traditional cryptography. And that leads to the question: What should we do about it?<\/p>\n Whether you think of Edward Snowden as a hero or a traitor (or neither, or both), his divisive reputation reminds me of quantum systems \u2014 not necessarily one thing or another. In the context of the uncertain arrival of quantum supremacy, in Snowden\u2019s new book he actually shares some good practical advice on encryption: use more than one algorithm. And he\u2019s right. When you can\u2019t be certain that your encryption will not fail, the best course of action is to encrypt your valuable data more than once, using different algorithms.<\/p>\n In the case of quantum computers, you just need to make sure that at least one of those algorithms is quantum-hardened. You can choose one of the 17 finalists<\/a> NIST has chosen for the second round of selection, where lattice-based and multivariate algorithms seem to come out ahead<\/a> of the disputed elliptic curves.<\/p>\n In the absence of a final selection, it might be a good idea from a business standpoint to continue using the readily available elliptic-curve cryptography on top of AES with sufficient key length, or SHA3, depending on what you need \u2014 because, as we already noted, valuable data requires \u201cencryption maintenance\u201d once in a while. Please never forget that.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" According to recent news, quantum supremacy is reached. What should we do about it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2279,"featured_media":14105,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1225,1486],"tags":[566,191,261,22,1773],"class_list":{"0":"post-14104","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-privacy","8":"category-threats","9":"tag-cryptography","10":"tag-data","11":"tag-encryption","12":"tag-google","13":"tag-quantum-computing"},"hreflang":[{"hreflang":"en-ae","url":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/14104\/"},{"hreflang":"en-in","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.in\/blog\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/16717\/"},{"hreflang":"en-us","url":"https:\/\/usa.kaspersky.com\/blog\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/18679\/"},{"hreflang":"en-gb","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/16751\/"},{"hreflang":"es-mx","url":"https:\/\/latam.kaspersky.com\/blog\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/15483\/"},{"hreflang":"es","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.es\/blog\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/19373\/"},{"hreflang":"it","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.it\/blog\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/18071\/"},{"hreflang":"ru","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.ru\/blog\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/23710\/"},{"hreflang":"tr","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.tr\/blog\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/6471\/"},{"hreflang":"x-default","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/28767\/"},{"hreflang":"fr","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.fr\/blog\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/12356\/"},{"hreflang":"pt-br","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.br\/blog\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/12505\/"},{"hreflang":"pl","url":"https:\/\/plblog.kaspersky.com\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/11283\/"},{"hreflang":"de","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.de\/blog\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/20636\/"},{"hreflang":"ja","url":"https:\/\/blog.kaspersky.co.jp\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/24246\/"},{"hreflang":"nl","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.nl\/blog\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/24683\/"},{"hreflang":"ru-kz","url":"https:\/\/blog.kaspersky.kz\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/19164\/"},{"hreflang":"en-au","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.au\/blog\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/23497\/"},{"hreflang":"en-za","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/23340\/"}],"acf":[],"banners":"","maintag":{"url":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/tag\/quantum-computing\/","name":"quantum computing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14104"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14346,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14104\/revisions\/14346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Quantum supremacy (allegedly) reached<\/h2>\n
Cryptography might let us down. What can we do?<\/h3>\n