Will quantum computing break crypto?

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Bitcoin.com News (BCN): What are quantum computing attacks, and what threat do they pose to blockchains and cryptocurrencies? How long will it be before quantum computers are capable of breaking the security algorithms in blockchains?

Johann Polecsak (JP): Powerful quantum computers with sufficient stable qubits will be able to break today’s cybersecurity standards. Today’s asymmetric cryptographic algorithms like RSA and EC used by the whole internet – including governments, banks, email providers, social media, blockchain platforms, etc .– will be cracked by quantum computers.

This threat affects blockchain technology as follows: all cryptocurrency wallets relying on Elliptic Curve (EC) cryptography which have at least one outgoing transaction will break. In short: hackers will be able to steal your cryptocurrency.

We are already having the wrong conversation in cryptography if we argue about whether we have 1, 3, or 5 years before quantum computers will break today’s security algorithms. We must always be ahead of the curve when it comes to cybersecurity.
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Forbes - Dec 2020 said:

There’s a lurking fear in cryptocurrency communities about quantum computing. Could it break cryptocurrencies and the encryption that protects them? How close might that be? Do the headlines around “quantum supremacy” mean that my private keys are at risk?

The simple answer: no. But let’s dive deeper into this phenomenon and really try to understand why this is the case and how quantum computing will interact with cryptocurrencies.
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On this front, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has already started gathering proposals for post-quantum cryptography, encryption that would operate and not be broken even with much larger quantum computers than the ones we’re currently able to build. They estimate that large enough quantum computers to disrupt classical encryption will potentially arrive in the next twenty years.

For cryptocurrencies, a fork in the future that might affect large parts of the chain, but it will be somewhat predictable — there is a lot of thought being placed on post-quantum encryption technology. Bitcoin would not be one of the first planks to fall if classical encryption were suddenly broken for a number of reasons. Yet, a soft fork (as opposed to a hard one) might be enough to help move crypto-assets from suddenly insecure keys to secure post-quantum encryption.

Even an efficient implementation of Shor’s Algorithm may not break some of the cryptography standards used in bitcoin. SHA-256 is theorized to be quantum-resistant.

The most efficient theoretical implementation of a quantum computer to detect a SHA-256 collision is actually less efficient than the theorized classical implementation for breaking the standard. The wallet file in the original Bitcoin client is using SHA-512 (a more secure version than SHA-256) to help encrypt private keys.
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Decrypt - Oct 2023 said:

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Bitcoin would be most at risk as transactions queue up to be processed.

That's not very long. New blocks are mined on the Bitcoin blockchain every 10 or so minutes (though not all eligible transactions are included in the first-available block). Once that’s happened, they can no longer be tampered with. However, before that happens, a private key could theoretically be replicated, allowing a hacker to steal funds from a user’s wallet before a new block on the blockchain is confirmed.

Quantum Computing CEO Andersen Cheng told Decrypt, “Once that public key is exposed, a quantum computer can work out the private key relatively quickly, in minutes or hours at most.”
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According to Mark Webber at the University of Sussex in the U.K., breaking this level of encryption would reportedly require a quantum computer with 1.9 billion “qubits." This is a staggeringly high figure, especially when you consider that IBM’s best quantum computer boasts a mere 127 quibits in comparison.
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The goal of cryptographic agility – or crypto agility – is simple: to enable business continuity if/when existing cryptography is compromised or weakened.

The move to crypto agility must begin immediately because quantum computing is likely to make a commonly used class of cryptography algorithms insecure in the next few years. The financial services sector cannot risk insecure data transmission or storage – it would break the way we conduct business today. And as the number of systems, dependencies between systems, and overall technical complexity grow, the effort to update cryptographic assets has intensified.

This paper, written by the FS-ISAC Post Quantum Cryptography Working Group (PQC Working Group), explains the process in detail and provides guidance and advice to financial services firms – or those of any industry – to help them become crypto agile.
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A report that Chinese researchers have employed a D-Wave quantum computer to breach encryption algorithms used to secure bank accounts, top-secret military data and crypto wallets is at first glance a matter for deep concern.

“This is the first time that a real quantum computer has posed a real and substantial threat to multiple full-scale SPN [Substitution-Permutation Network] structured algorithms in use today,” wrote Shanghai University scientists in a peer-reviewed paper, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) on Oct. 11.

The paper talks about breaking RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) encryption, one of the oldest and widely used public-key cryptosystems.

Details about the latest research have been slow to emerge so it’s difficult to say for sure how dire the threat is to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. The paper had yet to be released in English as of Oct. 11, and researchers weren’t taking any interviews, supposedly “due to the sensitivity of the topic,” according to SCMP.

But if the researchers’ results hold up, and can be duplicated by others, “it is a step forward” in the evolution of quantum computing, Marek Narozniak, a physicist with a background in quantum computing, and founder at sqrtxx.com, told Cointelegraph.

Would it mean that the password-protection mechanisms used in many industries, including banking and cryptocurrencies, might soon be vulnerable, as many fear, however?

“From the paper many details are missing, so it is difficult to provide a definite answer” with regard to its possible significance, Massimiliano Sala, Full professor and head of the Laboratory of Cryptography at the University of Trento, told Cointelegraph.

Much depends on whether the scientists were able to break RSA keys of a certain size — i.e., keys as large as those used by banks to secure customer’s savings and checking accounts today. “There is no evidence of that,” said Sala.

But if they had, it would be “huge,” he said.
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I work for the government.

As a technologist, I cannot keep this under wraps anymore.

There is a government-funded organization that is already experimenting with a quantum computer they call Miya, and it is orders of magnitude more powerful than Google's Willow.



According to the email, Miya is already capable of executing Shor's algorithm.

If you do not understand the implications of this, Shor's algorithm is a quantum algorithm that can break all modern encryption schemes, including RSA and ECC.

THE ENTIRE INTERNET IS AT RISK!

All personal information stored today will be obsolete. Your browsing history. Your chat logs. Your passwords. The money in your online banks. Nuclear codes. Internet-connected surveillance cameras. EVERYTHING.
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Over $55B has been dumped in publicly over decades across the world and the record is only 1000 phys/240 logic. This would require 1000s of breakthroughs and is an obvious joke to anyone in the field, but uninformed users do not understand this. ...

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Abstract
Distributed quantum computing (DQC) combines the computing power of multiple networked quantum processing modules, ideally enabling the execution of large quantum circuits without compromising performance or qubit connectivity1,2. Photonic networks are well suited as a versatile and reconfigurable interconnect layer for DQC; remote entanglement shared between matter qubits across the network enables all-to-all logical connectivity through quantum gate teleportation (QGT)3,4. For a scalable DQC architecture, the QGT implementation must be deterministic and repeatable; until now, no demonstration has satisfied these requirements. Here we experimentally demonstrate the distribution of quantum computations between two photonically interconnected trapped-ion modules. The modules, separated by about two metres, each contain dedicated network and circuit qubits. By using heralded remote entanglement between the network qubits, we deterministically teleport a controlled-Z (CZ) gate between two circuit qubits in separate modules, achieving 86% fidelity. We then execute Grover’s search algorithm5—to our knowledge, the first implementation of a distributed quantum algorithm comprising several non-local two-qubit gates—and measure a 71% success rate. Furthermore, we implement distributed iSWAP and SWAP circuits, compiled with two and three instances of QGT, respectively, demonstrating the ability to distribute arbitrary two-qubit operations6. As photons can be interfaced with a variety of systems, the versatile DQC architecture demonstrated here provides a viable pathway towards large-scale quantum computing for a range of physical platforms.
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BRICS News said:

Oxford Scientists Achieve Quantum Teleportation on a Scalable Supercomputer

A major breakthrough in quantum computing has been achieved by researchers at the University of Oxford, who have built a scalable quantum supercomputer capable of quantum teleportation.

The breakthrough tackles a fundamental challenge in quantum computing: scalability. While quantum computers have existed in theory for decades, practical large-scale implementations have remained elusive.

Unlike traditional computers that use binary bits (1s and 0s), quantum computers use qubits, which can exist as both 1 and 0 simultaneously due to superposition. This allows for computing power exponentially greater than classical systems.

What sets this breakthrough apart is the teleportation of logical gates—the basic components of quantum algorithms—across a network link. While quantum teleportation of data has been achieved before, this is the first time logical operations have been teleported, effectively linking separate quantum processors into a single, fully connected machine.

Researchers claim this technology could lay the foundation for a quantum internet, enabling ultra-secure communication, high-speed computation, and unprecedented advancements in technology.

"Our experiment demonstrates that network-distributed quantum information processing is feasible with current technology," said Professor David Lucas, a lead scientist on the project.

The findings, published in Nature, mark a significant step toward scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computing, bringing us closer to a future where quantum machines could revolutionize industries from cryptography to artificial intelligence.

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Microsoft believes it has made a key breakthrough in quantum computing, unlocking the potential for quantum computers to solve industrial-scale problems. The software giant has spent 17 years working on a research project to create a new material and architecture for quantum computing, and it’s unveiling the Majorana 1 processor, Microsoft’s first quantum processor based on this new architecture.

At the core of a quantum computer are qubits, a unit of information in quantum computing much like the binary bits that computers use today. Companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Google have all been trying to make qubits as reliable as binary bits for years now because they’re a lot more delicate and sensitive to noise that can create errors or lead to loss of data.

Majorana 1 can potentially fit a million qubits onto a single chip that’s not much bigger than the CPUs inside desktop PCs and servers. Microsoft isn’t using electrons for the compute in this new chip; it’s using the Majorana particle that theoretical physicist Ettore Majorana described in 1937. Microsoft has reached this milestone by creating what it calls the “world’s first topoconductor,” a new type of material that can not only observe but also control Majorana particles to create more reliable qubits.

Microsoft has outlined its research in a peer-reviewed paper published today in Nature, explaining how its researchers were able to create the topological qubit. Microsoft has helped create a new material made from indium arsenide and aluminum, and it has placed eight topological qubits on a chip that it hopes can eventually scale to 1 million.
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