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This is a very active area of research in theoretical cryptography, and has been for over a decade. It’s an area that I myself work in. The uncertainty is not q
by dsacco 9y ago
This is a very active area of research in theoretical cryptography, and has been for over a decade. It’s an area that I myself work in. The uncertainty is not quite what you think: researchers more or less know what will happen to public-key cryptography, and to which cryptosystems. We also have credible proposals for encryption, key exchange and digital signatures. The uncertainty is when quantum computers will be practical, not what will happen when they are.
Contemporary research is predominantly concerned with improving computability efficiency or security proofs for underlying complexity characteristics.
- blattimwind 9y ago> The uncertainty is when quantum computers will be practical, not what will happen when they are. That's what I meant above; I apologize for I should have been more clear in my wording.
- dsacco 9y agoAh, no worries. Post-quantum cryptography has a reputation for being somewhat excessively theoretical (which to be fair is a reasonable argument). But there are benefits other than post-quantum security. For example, lattice problems can provide security according to worst-case hardness, whereas factoring problems can only provide average-case hardness. In other words, for some lattice problems, we can prove that breaking the cryptosystem is equivalent to breaking every instance of the lattice problem, but factoring problems only guarantee that breaking the cryptosystem is equivalent to breaking a subset of problems from some distibution. The former is a much stronger security assumption (though in practice this comes with its own set of challenges). It’s an exciting area of research.