quantumcomputing – SSL and internet security news

GCHQ on Quantum Key Distribution

The UK’s GCHQ delivers a brutally blunt assessment of quantum key distribution:

QKD protocols address only the problem of agreeing keys for encrypting data. Ubiquitous on-demand modern services (such as verifying identities and data integrity, establishing network sessions, providing access control, and automatic software updates) rely more on authentication and integrity mechanisms — such as digital signatures — than on encryption.

QKD technology cannot replace the flexible authentication mechanisms provided by contemporary public key signatures. QKD also seems unsuitable for some of the grand future challenges such as securing the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, social media, or cloud applications.

I agree with them. It’s a clever idea, but basically useless in practice. I don’t even think it’s anything more than a niche solution in a world where quantum computers have broken our traditional public-key algorithms.

Read the whole thing. It’s short.

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infossl August 1, 2018 authentication, cryptography, economicsofsecurity, encryption, gchq, keys, quantumcomputing, quantumcryptography, Security technology Read more >

Post-Quantum Algorithms

NIST has organized a competition for public-key algorithms secure against a quantum computer. It recently published all of its Round 1 submissions. (Details of the NIST efforts are here. A timeline for the new algorithms is here.)

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infossl December 27, 2017 algorithms, contests, cryptography, nist, quantumcomputing, Security technology Read more >

Post-Quantum RSA

Interesting research on a version of RSA that is secure against a quantum computer:

Post-quantum RSA

Daniel J. Bernstein, Nadia Heninger, Paul Lou, and Luke Valenta

Abstract: This paper proposes RSA parameters for which (1) key generation, encryption, decryption, signing, and verification are feasible on today’s computers while (2) all known attacks are infeasible, even assuming highly scalable quantum computers. As part of the performance analysis, this paper introduces a new algorithm to generate a batch of primes. As part of the attack analysis, this paper introduces a new quantum factorization algorithm that is often much faster than Shor’s algorithm and much faster than pre-quantum factorization algorithms. Initial pqRSA implementation results are provided.

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infossl May 31, 2017 academicpapers, quantumcomputing, rsa, Security technology Read more >