{"id":16394,"date":"2019-09-24T04:30:15","date_gmt":"2019-09-24T12:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2019\/09\/24\/news-10135\/"},"modified":"2019-09-24T04:30:15","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T12:30:15","slug":"news-10135","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2019\/09\/24\/news-10135\/","title":{"rendered":"Quantum supremacy is almost uncertainly here"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Credit to Author: Sergey Lurye| Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2019 12:01:05 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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 The news made quite a splash \u2014 and then, the report was retracted.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<p>The retraction, which the <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/b9bb4e54-dbc1-11e9-8f9b-77216ebe1f17\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Financial Times<\/a><\/em> discovered on NASA&#8217;s 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&#8217;s actually very likely that the so-called quantum supremacy has indeed arrived. Bear with me and I&#8217;ll explain what makes me think so.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/media.kasperskydaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/92\/2019\/09\/24075936\/quantum-supremacy-is-here-featured.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.kasperskydaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/92\/2019\/09\/24075936\/quantum-supremacy-is-here-featured.jpg\" alt=\"Did Google's quantum computer just defeat RSA 512 algorithm?\" width=\"1460\" height=\"958\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-28768\" \/><\/a> <\/p>\n<h2>Quantum supremacy (allegedly) reached<\/h2>\n<p>Last year, impressed by the amount of attention post-quantum cryptography received at the RSA conference, we <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/quantum-supremacy-rsa\/22339\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">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<p>It sounds like yes given the recent news. However, the fact of the matter is that no one has had a thousand years to wait for a supercomputer calculation. But that&#8217;s not the most important thing here. It looks like time&#8217;s up for traditional cryptography. And this fact begs the question: what should we do about it?<\/p>\n<h3>Cryptography might let us down. What can we do?<\/h3>\n<p>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&#8217;s new book he actually shares some good practical advice on encryption: use more than one algorithm. And he&#8217;s right. When you can&#8217;t 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<p>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 <a href=\"https:\/\/csrc.nist.gov\/publications\/detail\/nistir\/8240\/final\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">17 finalists<\/a> NIST has chosen for the second round of selection, where lattice-based and multivariate algorithms seem to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/secure-futures-magazine\/quantum-encryption\/28372\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">come out ahead<\/a> of the disputed elliptic curves.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8220;encryption maintenance&#8221; once in a while. Please never forget that.<\/p>\n<p> <input type=\"hidden\" class=\"category_for_banner\" value=\"kesb-trial\" \/> <br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/quantum-supremacy-is-here\/28767\/\" target=\"bwo\" >https:\/\/blog.kaspersky.com\/feed\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.kasperskydaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/92\/2019\/09\/24075936\/quantum-supremacy-is-here-featured.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Credit to Author: Sergey Lurye| Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2019 12:01:05 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>According to recent news, quantum supremacy is reached. What should we do about it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10425,10378],"tags":[11047,11817,10439,1670,5897,11050,10438],"class_list":["post-16394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kaspersky","category-security","tag-cryptography","tag-data-protection","tag-encryption","tag-google","tag-privacy","tag-quantum-computing","tag-threats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}