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Crypto Armageddon?

A paper announcing Google's Quantum Supremacy was published on NASA.gov and quickly taken down shortly after according to Fortune.com. The Financial Times reported the news first.
This quantum computer, dubbed "Sycamore" containing 53-qubits, can solve 53-bit cryptography in seconds. Every year, the system will be scaled up, which means that 2048-bit code-breaking could be achieved in mere seconds within two years.

What would take 50 trillion hours to compute on Google cloud using conventional supercomputers would take a mere 30 seconds, researchers stated.

My question to the folks at Keybase, Stellar, and other crypto experts is this:
What are the implications for cryptography, specifically cryptocurrency, privacy, and the military?

"Quantum speedup is achievable in a real-world system and is not precluded by any hidden physical laws," the researchers wrote.

  1. Are we to be concerned about our privacy?
  2. Will Google be able to steal our Cryptos?
  3. Can we keep anything safe and secret from the (ideological/military) enemies?

Sources:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a18475/google-nasa-d-wave-quantum-computer/
https://fortune.com/2019/09/20/google-claims-quantum-supremacy/
https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-09-22-google-quantum-supremacy-the-end-of-encryption-security-for-cryptocurrency.html

Those are legitimate questions. I'm not a cryptography expert but I think I can partly answer.

First of all, this looks like a communication coup more than anything else. Now and then people who try to develop quantum computers do such an operation to raise funds. It's been so since dozens of years.

Here, the paper has been conveniently "released" in a way that bypasses peer review. You can bet that serious review will seriously tune down the expectations.

The information from the articles doesn't match together, and they are written in a way that is meant to excite the imagination and induce the reader to misinterpret the situation. The third article, in particular, is full of inaccuracy, misunderstandings and goes totally off track with the GOD-is-an-IA thing.

The conclusion that "2048-bit code-breaking could be achieved in mere seconds within two years." is erroneous. NASA said that at that point, they could only link qubits by groups of 7. They would need to link them all to achieve a real quantum processor. So they are stuck on a serious technical problem here.

Now, you're right in stating that quantum computing is a threat for asymmetric cryptography, and this is why solutions are being worked out since years. But not all cryptographic functions are weak to quantum computing: for example, hashes are not.

This is why, in the early days of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto introduced a change to hide public keys stored in UTXO behind two cryptographic hash functions. This way, accounts are safe against quantum computing until the first time funds are moved.

So to summarize: we still have plenty of time and it's not going to be as dramatic as it seems. But yes, this needs to be addressed seriously.

Are we to be concerned about our privacy?

Yes, as most encrypted peer-to-peer communications rely on asymmetric cryptography. We already know that agencies such as the NSA are storing those in big data centers, waiting for the day they can break the encryption.

Even excluding quantum computing, asymmetric cryptography never was about hiding a secret forever - but only for a long period (20+ years). Unfortunately, the marketing around secure communications often forgets to state that fact.

Will Google be able to steal our Cryptos?

Only from incompetent projects, as a legitimate project will likely implement protections in time. It will be a mess, but we'll go through. What will happen on the user side is that we will all have to either update our signing keys or move our funds to quantum-safe accounts.

When it comes to big players stealing crypto, remember that many so-called "secure" wallets store private keys right on Google/Amazon/Microsoft/... servers without encrypting them before sending (they let the cloud service deal with encryption). This means that Google & such already have a lot of keys at their disposal.

Can we keep anything safe and secret from the (ideological/military) enemies?

There are still challenges to be solved before we have a fully functional quantum-resistant cryptography. But most likely we'll get there before them. Even the military needs reliable encryption.

    Thanks MisterTicot Such an informed and balanced reply. Much appreciate your insights and time.

    It somehow eases the first panic concerns, and you're right, the crypto community must be on its toes.

    Hello MisterTicot and everybody else.
    Here is an update from a company called D-Wave. In their broschure (https://www.dwavesys.com/sites/default/files/D-Wave%202000Q%20Tech%20Collateral_0117F.pdf), they claim this:
    "The D-Wave 2000Q system has up to 2048 qubits and 5600 couplers. To reach this scale, it uses 128,000 Josephson junctions, which makes the D-Wave 2000Q QPU by far the most complex superconducting integrated circuit ever built."_

    And here is the scary part:
    "The D-Wave 2000Q system provides a standard Internet API (based on RESTful services), with client libraries available for C/C++, Python, and MATLAB. This interface allows users to access the system either as a cloud resource over a network, or integrated into their high-performance computing environments and data centers. Access is also available through D-Wave’s hosted cloud service. Using D-Wave’s development tools and client libraries, developers can create algorithms and applications within their existing environments using industry-standard tools."_

    Taken from the article: https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-09-24-d-wave-2000-qubit-quantum-computing-encryption.html

    Does this change the original response, MisterTicot ?

    Thanks in advance
    CH

      unseen

      Well, no it doesn't. Did you notice it is the same company that in the first articles? It confirms my point that the paper "leak" was part of a marketing effort: first create the hype, then sell a product. That's exactly what they are doing, right?

      Once again, my understanding is that you'll need about 2048 connected qubits to break usual asymmetric cryptography. D-wave architecture is far from it - they just stack together groups of 7 qubits. This means that they cannot run the algorithms that could defeat some of the cryptography we use every day. They are very far from it.

      This brings us to the article you linked. Once again, Naturalnews is doing a disservice to their readers by pilling so much disinformation & mystic speculations together.

      Just to mention a couple of them:

      • According to them, there is at that time an API that we can use to break cryptography. Don't you think that, if it were true, Bitcoin accounts would get emptied at lightspeed - and that every media would be talking about it 24/7? Not to mention attacks on the banking system, big companies and so on...
      • The part about a cooling system using tap water is particularly ridiculous. Quantum computers need to be cooled near the absolute zero to function, and D-wave is no exception. (15mk = -273.1485°C)

      So it seems pretty safe to say that this article is a pure hoax.

      If you are interested in the subject, I suggest that you look for more realistic articles such as this one.

        Thanks once again MisterTicot 👍
        Can we attribute the sudden drop of BTC and other crypto currencies to the Quantum Computer news scare?
        Thanks for the link to the Techbeacon article.

        I much appreciate your insights.

        CH

        PS: I posted a comment on naturalnews pointing to this discussion. No response.

          unseen Can we attribute the sudden drop of BTC and other crypto currencies to the Quantum Computer news scare?

          I don't think so. There are more influential factors such as the 3-month descending triangle coming to an end, Bakkt start not being up to expectations and what I assume to be big players manipulations to get cheap Bitcoins.

          Maybe @citystates could provide more insights as he has more flair than I do when it comes to markets.