The world is appreciating the progress being made in quantum computing, but they are unaware of the imminent threats posed by advanced quantum computers.
New research from startup Oratomic and Google suggests that quantum computers could become a threat to global cybersecurity much sooner than previously thought, potentially before the end of the decade.
efficiency success
A study by Oratomic has proven that common encryption and authentication standards, such as P-256 security technology, can be cracked with less than 10,000 qubits, marking a huge reduction from previous estimates that millions of qubits would be required to hack this technology.
“I was in a conversation saying you need millions of qubits to crack security technology,” said Dolev Blubstein, who co-founded Oratomic and is one of the authors of the analysis.
The team of researchers were surprised when they discovered a sudden drop in the range. “We were quite surprised,” Bluvstein said.
‘Quantum Apocalypse’ by 2029
Earlier this week, Google also issued a dire warning about the upcoming “quantum apocalypse,” detailing how the world, including governments, financial institutions, and tech companies, is unknowingly headed toward cybersecurity collapse.
In a blogpost, Google revealed that quantum computers pose a significant threat to “current cryptographic standards”, culminating in an “imminent apocalypse” that could soon lead to hacked Internet security.
In view of the growing digital threats posed by quantum hackers, Google plans to prioritize post-quantum cryptography migration for authentication services – a critical component of online security and digital signature migration.
Therefore, Google has developed a more efficient algorithm that can crack cryptocurrency encryption. They have not released specific details of this secret algorithm, which is intended to prevent bad actors from abusing it.
The findings have shifted the consensus from a “ten-year-old” problem to an issue of “renewed urgency”.
what’s at stake?
Given the scale of the vulnerabilities, the imminent threat may primarily target credit card systems, chip-and-PIN devices, and cryptocurrencies.
Beyond simply reading private messages, hackers can impersonate computers via push notifications to deliver spam and malware.
