When it comes to technology, our future is bright: personalized medical devices, superfast computers, robots assistants, and of course quantum computers are just some of the things that what await us. However, with more progress comes more responsibility, and we need to be prepared for potential dangers that the new technology could bring.
Take quantum computers for example: they operate on the subatomic level and can provide processing power that is millions of times faster than that of silicon-based computers. While certainly amazing, this also means that a hacker equipped with a next-gen quantum computer could encrypt any internet communication that was sent today.
For this reason, we need an online security system that is prepared for what the future brings. Nathan Hamlin, instructor and director of the WSU Math Learning Center, is one of the people helping the creation of safe online communications and transactions.
Hamlin developed a newly written code called the Generalized Knapsack Code that could thwart hackers that use quantum computers. “The Generalized Knapsack Code expands upon the binary representations today’s computers use to operate by using a variety of representations other than 0s and 1,” he explains. “This lets it block a greater array of cyberattacks, including those using basis reduction, one of the decoding methods used to break the original knapsack code.”
The newly written code is a step toward safer quantum computing, so researchers are now thinking of adapting it for commercial use.
Reference:
Washington State University via ScienceDaily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170228185341.htm)
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