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I just posted this on reddit, but I'm curious about Hacker News' take on it, so apologies for the cross-posting: Can I ask an honest question? Shouldn't people

I just posted this on reddit, but I'm curious about Hacker News' take on it, so apologies for the cross-posting: Can I ask an honest question? Shouldn't people be scared shitless of quantum computing? If a single organization develops the ability to factor prime numbers at unheard-of speeds, doesn't this put in jeopardy the mathematical backbone of all encryption, and therefore don't they pose a threat to all financial institutions? Don't they then have the power to hold the world at ransom? I don't mean this as a conspiracy theory -- I don't think an actual "event" is even necessary to pose such a threat. If it's proven that theoretically sound classical encryption can be theoretically cracked in record time by quantum computers, I am afraid of what will happen to the world financial markets due to panic. Nevermind the first time it is actually used to steal billions of dollars, or some other large-scale event. I'm no expert on quantum computing, please enlightenment if indeed Shor's algorithm does not pose a threat to privacy or to the financial markets. It would help me sleep at night. For now, I do think the idea is not totally unfounded [1] and therefore quantum computing, for all the positives (eg fast solves for hard optimisation problems, which would have massive applicability), scares the living daylights out of me. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20121115112940/http://people.ccmr.cornell.edu/%7Emermin/qcomp/chap3.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20121115112940/http://people.ccm...

hannob 7y ago
> If a single organization develops the ability to factor prime numbers at unheard-of speeds, doesn't this put in jeopardy the mathematical backbone of all encryption, and therefore don't they pose a threat to all financial institutions? Two things: 1. It's extremely unlikely that this will happen overnight, and practical factoring is still pretty far away compared to today's quantum computing state. 2. There's work done on developing post-quantum-cryptography (which is in essence all cryptography that we believe cannot be broken by a QC). NIST, the US standardization organization, is currently running a competition for future standards. It has some challenges, but it's doable. That still leaves the issue that past-time communication may be decrypted in the future. But other than that - we will almost certainly have alternatives when QC factoring becomes real.
- radarsat1 7y ago
  Very interesting, thanks, I didn't know it was an active research area, although that completely makes sense. > That still leaves the issue that past-time communication may be decrypted in the future. Honestly I didn't even think of this. Pretty freaky nonetheless.
  - dodobirdlord 7y ago
    Indeed. The best time to stop using RSA was decades ago, but now's also a good time. It's speculated that one of the reasons the NSA is storing so much encrypted data is that they think the contents will still be worth knowing many years from now when they can finally decrypt it.
    - yyyk 7y ago
      "The best time to stop using RSA was decades ago..." There are arguments against using RSA, but I don't see how Quantum Computing is one of those. The common elliptic curve alternatives are even more vulnerable to QC than RSA, while the new QC-resistant algorithms aren't accepted yet. So if QC is your concern, you have algorithms worse than RSA on one corner, and not-entirely-tested algorithms on the other.
      - hannob 7y ago
        There's an argument to be made that maybe we'd be using Ntru by now if its inventors hadn't decided to file patents for it. Lucky for us the patents are expired now. Patents are the most reliable way to make sure your crypto isn't used widely for 20 years...
        yyyk 7y ago
        Not just crypto. Arithmetic coding, known to have better compression than Huffman, is almost unused due to patents.

hannob 7y ago

> If a single organization develops the ability to factor prime numbers at unheard-of speeds, doesn't this put in jeopardy the mathematical backbone of all encryption, and therefore don't they pose a threat to all financial institutions? Two things: 1. It's extremely unlikely that this will happen overnight, and practical factoring is still pretty far away compared to today's quantum computing state. 2. There's work done on developing post-quantum-cryptography (which is in essence all cryptography that we believe cannot be broken by a QC). NIST, the US standardization organization, is currently running a competition for future standards. It has some challenges, but it's doable. That still leaves the issue that past-time communication may be decrypted in the future. But other than that - we will almost certainly have alternatives when QC factoring becomes real.

radarsat1 7y ago
Very interesting, thanks, I didn't know it was an active research area, although that completely makes sense. > That still leaves the issue that past-time communication may be decrypted in the future. Honestly I didn't even think of this. Pretty freaky nonetheless.
- dodobirdlord 7y ago
  Indeed. The best time to stop using RSA was decades ago, but now's also a good time. It's speculated that one of the reasons the NSA is storing so much encrypted data is that they think the contents will still be worth knowing many years from now when they can finally decrypt it.
  - yyyk 7y ago
    "The best time to stop using RSA was decades ago..." There are arguments against using RSA, but I don't see how Quantum Computing is one of those. The common elliptic curve alternatives are even more vulnerable to QC than RSA, while the new QC-resistant algorithms aren't accepted yet. So if QC is your concern, you have algorithms worse than RSA on one corner, and not-entirely-tested algorithms on the other.
    - hannob 7y ago
      There's an argument to be made that maybe we'd be using Ntru by now if its inventors hadn't decided to file patents for it. Lucky for us the patents are expired now. Patents are the most reliable way to make sure your crypto isn't used widely for 20 years...
      - yyyk 7y ago
        Not just crypto. Arithmetic coding, known to have better compression than Huffman, is almost unused due to patents.