U.S. and China race to shield secrets from quantum computers

[Tillu]

In February, a Canadian cybersecurity firm delivered an ominous forecast to the U.S. Department of Defense. America’s secrets – actually, everybody’s secrets – are now at risk of exposure, warned the team from Quantum Defen5e (QD5).

 

Militaries would see their long-term plans and intelligence gathering exposed to enemies. Businesses could have their intellectual property swiped. People’s health records would be laid bare.

 

Opinion is divided on the expected arrival of Q-day, to be sure. It’s still relatively early days for quantum computing: So far, only small quantum computers with limited processing power and a vulnerability to error have been built. Some researchers estimate that Q-day might come closer to the middle of the century.

No one knows who might get there first. The United States and China are considered the leaders in the field; many experts believe America still holds an edge.

As the race to master quantum computing continues, a scramble is on to protect critical data. Washington and its allies are working on new encryption standards known as post-quantum cryptography – essentially codes that are much harder to crack, even for a quantum computer. Beijing is trying to pioneer quantum communications networks, a technology theoretically impossible to hack, according to researchers. The scientist spearheading Beijing’s efforts has become a minor celebrity in China.

While quantum computing threatens to upend existing security measures, the physics behind this technology could also be exploited to build theoretically unhackable networks.

In a quantum communications network, users exchange a secret key or code on subatomic particles called photons, allowing them to encrypt and decrypt data. This is called quantum key distribution, or QKD. It is one of the fundamental properties of quantum mechanics that can ensure secure communications. Any attempt to monitor or interfere with these quantum particles changes them, physicists explain. That means any attempt to intercept the communications is immediately detectable to users. If the communicating parties receive an uncorrupted encryption key, they can be confident that their subsequent communications will be secure.

 

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/us-china-tech-quantum/

 

[Tillu]

Hope India had already taken note and copied the encrypted database dumps of every major organisations in the world. When Quantum computers become a reality then we could use the technology to decrypt those databases and find their secrets. US, China, Russia and all the major European countries must have already did that.

[MechEng]

Human ingenuity amazes me sometimes, I can imagine how incredibly complex quantum computing can be and the sophisticated intelligence required to craft it.