5 ms·
If these hashes are broken, most cryptocurrencies have a plan to switch to post-quantum cryptography. It can happen very quickly, within weeks. Also consider t
by bufferoverflow 9y ago
If these hashes are broken, most cryptocurrencies have a plan to switch to post-quantum cryptography. It can happen very quickly, within weeks.
Also consider that if they are actually broken, we will have much bigger problems - no secure banking, military data compromised, all kinds of hacking of all kinds of infrastructures, etc.
- sincerely 9y agowhy not implement post-quantum crypto now if there’s already a plan in place? this seems like a situation where “better late than never” isn’t true
- arisAlexis 9y agoThere is one launching check out theqrl.org
- johncolanduoni 9y agoThe post-quantum algorithms haven't been around very long and as a result don't have the same level of confidence. Most post-quantum implementations that are in or nearing production use both existing methods (e.g. DH) and a post-quantum counterpart (e.g. New Hope) and combine them in a way that requires both to fail for there to be an issue (e.g. XORing the produced secrets together).
- zakk 9y agoSHA is already quantum resistant. The problem is with public key encryption, i.e. bitcoin addresses.
- johncolanduoni 9y agoThe problem that Bitcoin relies on being hard (with regards to the proof of work, not addresses) is different from the one e.g. the standard PKI relies on being hard. It's not very likely the hashes would be broken by an advance in quantum computing; there are some sub-exponential speed ups that have been explored but nothing that would break the blockchain. It would be more akin to the movement from GPUs to ASICs.