According to experts, in just eight years quantum computers will be among us, and then, our world will change. Yes, quantum computers will help us solve many problems much faster than ever before, they will also be useful for developing advanced medicine and for calculating super-accurate weather forecasts, but they will also quite possibly destroy internet security as we know it. Cryptographers Tanja Lange of the Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, and Daniel J. Bernstein of the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA, explain how we can protect internet security in the future.
With the arrival of quantum computers, a lot of sensitive data will be in the open, and that includes even data from years back. This is because a hacker could record our secure communication today and then use a quantum computer years later to break it. The main concerns are obviously state secrets, bank and health records and private data.
To avoid these huge problems, Lange is trying to create awareness on the issue and develop new systems. She is leading the research consortium PQCRYPTO consisting of eleven universities and companies, which is developing new cryptographic techniques. Lang cautions that it’s important to strengthen research in cryptography, but that this is something that takes time. “Bringing cryptographic techniques to the end user often takes another 15 to 20 years, after development and standardization.”
Lange and Bernstein, as well as other experts, are hard at work trying to find the best ways to protect internet security and privacy from future quantum computer attacks.
Reference:
ScienceDaily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170913192957.htm)
Chanwoo's Weekly Tech 