[talk] [EXTERNAL]Re: RSA DSA challenged (again)

[Callahan, Brian Robert]

Not directly comparable, but a data point.

We have an IBM System One Quantum computer at RPI. My undergraduate students can crack RSA with it, but the best they can do is 6-bit keys (but this includes error mitigation, could be higher without error mitigation but that comes with its own costs...).

Whether or not you're ready to jump to new crypto systems in response to this info is up to you, but their work effectively automatically scales up as you add more qubits...

An IBM System One has 127 qubits, for reference.

~Brian

--
Brian Robert Callahan, '15G, '18 Ph.D., ISSMP, CISSP, CISM
Graduate Program Director, ITWS at RPI
Director, Rensselaer Cybersecurity Collaboratory
Office: Lally 304

On Oct 14, 2024 12:22 PM, ori at eigenstate.org wrote:
CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.

So, while I'm a layman, this smells fishy on a number of levels. From my recollection:

- There isn't any quantum advantage for most symmetric algorithms, including AES.

- D-Wave quantum computers are still adiabatic, which (IIRC) means that they can't
  be used for grover's or shor's algorithm -- and therefore, they're not useful for
  cracking public key algorithms.

- Finally, if I'm wrong about the above two points, if RSA can be attacked, then
  so can elliptic curves. We'd need to move to lattice based cryptography or isogeny
  curves. something like ML-KEM (formerly known as Khyber). or NewHope.

Reading the SCMP article, it sounds like they managed to attack some simple s-box
like algorithms, but not AES. I'm not sure what this has to do with RSA. I'll have
to dig up the paper later, but I think this is probably not an imminent threat.

Quoth Isaac (.ike) Levy <ike at blackskyresearch.net>:
> Noteworthy, this making the rounds,
>
> https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/quantum-computing/chinese-scientists-use-quantum-computers-to-crack-military-grade-encryption-quantum-attack-poses-a-real-and-substantial-threat-to-rsa-and-aes
>
> paywalled,
> https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3282051/chinese-scientists-hack-military-grade-encryption-quantum-computer-paper
>
> About time to go hard with eliptic curves?
>
> Regardless of how real or not, at the very least it's a good real kick in the pants toward EC, but the confusion and stigma about compromised, backdoored, or naively flawed EC implementation needs to be broadly clarified...
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Rocket-
> .ike
>
>
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