No, The Chinese Have Not Broken Modern Encryption Systems with a Quantum Computer – Source: www.schneier.com

Who? • October 22, 2024 9:48 AM

My background in theoretical physics (named “fundamental physics” at my University) makes it clear to me that, even if sending information a few microseconds to the past is possible following the rules of the quantum mechanics, turning into a possibility starting the next iteration of an algorithm before the previous one ends, each iteration consumes a certain amount of energy.

Even if quantum computers are able to run computations that would require thousands of years on a classical counterpart, the amount of energy required to fullfill this process will be prohibitively high.

I know, some people on this forum has talked about the possibility of running those quantum computers connected to their own nuclear power plants (something I do not doubt is a possibility for an intelligence agency), but even in this case we need to provide that huge amount of energy required to complete the decryption process on a short time period. No, it is not feasible with our current technology and, even if it were, breaking a single cryptographic secret will be incredibly expensive so, at best, we can expect highly targeted attacks using these quantum computers.

I agree with Bruce, we are far away of achieving this goal and, even in this case, we are doing research on quantum-resistant encryption algorithms right now. As this technology evolves, we will see how these quantum-resistant counterparts survive but right now it seems we have an answer to a problem that does not exist yet.