Chinese researchers break RSA encryption with a quantum computer

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3562701/chinese-researchers-break-rsa-encryption-with-a-quantum-computer.html

16 Comments

  1. xXBongSlut420Xx on

    to be clear, they factored a 22-bit rsa integer (this is in the article, which most commenters clearly didn’t read). this is impressive and noteworthy, but it doesn’t mean that rsa is fully broken (yet). most rsa key-pairs are 2048 or 4096 bits.

  2. Lonely-Marsupial1399 on

    Quantum computer still unstable and works only ay Absolute Zero.

    Also its 22-bit RSA encryption, not 2048-bit or 4096-bit RSA.

    So quantum computers still can’t break encryption.

  3. tacotacotacorock on

    Is D-Wave an quantum simulator or isn’t an actual working quantum computer? I could not quickly determine. I know a lot of these quantum breakthroughs are being done in simulators.  Also it seems like the Chinese are not solely responsible for this. The research hinges on D-Wave which is from up California based company (whether or not that company is Chinese owned I don’t know). 

    Edit: like I suspected D-Wave is a programmable computer able to run linear optimizations that would simulate quantum systems. 

    So yeah an actual quantum computer did not do this yet. But the theory behind it is actually quite promising in my opinion. 

  4. The real question is, if they actually did, why would they publicise it? This would give them so much spying power, they would keep this under wraps

  5. Heres the context as far as I understand as a layman (someone correct me if I am wrong):

    It’s more of a concept how they could do it, with a proof of concept they did with a 22 bit Integer.

    Modern RSA is based AT LEAST on 2048 bit integers, and an important detail about quantum computers and algorithms is that you cannot just “break up” the challenge in smaller ones, which means they need (with the current technology) a computer at least 100 times as big as they used, which is outside of anything thats physically possible to build currently.

    Make with the information what you want. No one can say for sure if we ever manage to scale up this technology in future or not, but right now, there is no acute danger. Still, keeping an eye on post quantum cryptography might not be wrong.

  6. For me this is the real concern I have of having data in a cloud service. If your data is leaked today (for instance in transit), no worries in the short term but, if this data is stored, decrypted in 5 to 10 years and it is still valid… Then you have an issue. I know there are too many ifs but at least for me, this is a concern for long term data.

  7. I know there are still many systems that use RSA, but haven’t we mostly switched to ECC? I’m lazy to read wiki and may be even completely misremembering the whole thing.

  8. “There are only two different types of companies in the world: those that have been breached and know it and those that have been breached and don’t know it.” ― Ted Schlein