If this is genuinely worrying to you, take some solace in that post-quantum alternatives are undergoing standardization and implementation right now (Signal and iMessage, for example, have already deployed some PQC, as have others).
However, this announcement is a nothing-burger. As I mentioned down-thread, you should view any QC announcement/press-release with extreme skepticism unless it includes replicable (read: open-source targeting hardware other researchers can test on) benchmarks for progress on real-world use-cases (e.g., Shor, Grover, or a newly-identified actually-interesting use-case). OP does not. Nothing to see here.
Worth saying, I am not a cryptographer—I do cryptography-adjacent research engineering. However, given the level of hype going around this industry, I think it's fair to at least expect to see the spec-sheet as it were.
Thank you for taking the time to respond. I personally lend at least some degree of credence to their claim, given that this is Microsoft we're talking about and not some startup.
If their claim is true, then would that present an issue to RSA encryption? I find it difficult to find information on this topic that is digestible to a layman.
My understanding is that the benefit of quantum computing is parallelism, and I'm not sure how today's encryption standards would be safe from brute force attacks.
When a company that makes quantum computers is on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_Factoring_Challenge
1 qubit prototype can crack RSA? 1million scaled out qubits is still talk
Not even 1 qubit, just "substantial progress towards the realization of a topological qubit" (from the accompanying Nature paper).
Please someone give input on this. It's extremely important and worrying.
If this is genuinely worrying to you, take some solace in that post-quantum alternatives are undergoing standardization and implementation right now (Signal and iMessage, for example, have already deployed some PQC, as have others).
However, this announcement is a nothing-burger. As I mentioned down-thread, you should view any QC announcement/press-release with extreme skepticism unless it includes replicable (read: open-source targeting hardware other researchers can test on) benchmarks for progress on real-world use-cases (e.g., Shor, Grover, or a newly-identified actually-interesting use-case). OP does not. Nothing to see here.
Worth saying, I am not a cryptographer—I do cryptography-adjacent research engineering. However, given the level of hype going around this industry, I think it's fair to at least expect to see the spec-sheet as it were.
All the best,
Thank you for taking the time to respond. I personally lend at least some degree of credence to their claim, given that this is Microsoft we're talking about and not some startup.
If their claim is true, then would that present an issue to RSA encryption? I find it difficult to find information on this topic that is digestible to a layman.
My understanding is that the benefit of quantum computing is parallelism, and I'm not sure how today's encryption standards would be safe from brute force attacks.
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Would it be smartest for one to sell crypto right now while normies are still oblivious of what's about to happen?
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