[tor-talk] NSA supercomputer

Anthony Papillion anthony at papillion.me
Fri Apr 5 21:33:12 UTC 2013


On 04/05/2013 01:01 PM, Andrew F wrote:
> 
> Basically he said that with quantum computing all bets are off and every
> cipher today will likely be cracked. Quantum computing will require new
> kinds of ciphers and only those with Qcomputers will be able to decrypt the
> messages.

Not entirely correct, as I understand it. Granted, quantum computing
will shred most (all?) of the ciphers we currently use. But that's
mostly because they will be able to do massively efficient prime
factorization using something like Shor's algorithm
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm). If I understand
correctly, resisting such technology doesn't require creating a cipher
that takes a quantum computer to decrypt but one that is resistant to
efficient factorization.


Just my $0.02,
Anthony


More information about the tor-talk mailing list