Security experts have long worried that advances in quantum computing could eventually make it easier to break encryption that protects the privacy of people’s data. That’s because these sophisticated machines can perform calculations at speeds impossible for conventional computers, potentially enabling them to crack codes previously thought indecipherable. Now, a Swiss technology company says it has made a breakthrough by using quantum computers to uncover vulnerabilities in commonly used encryption. The company believes it’s found a security weakness that could jeopardize the confidentiality of the world’s internet data, banking transactions and emails. Terra Quantum AG said its discovery “upends the current understanding of what constitutes unbreakable” encryption and could have major implications for the world’s leading technology companies, such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Microsoft Corp., and International Business Machines Corp.
The protocol in detail
The history of the non-stop contest between cryptographer and decipherers traces back to the cave ages and has seen many victories for both sides. Terra Quantum bases its solution on the Vernon’s cipher, the so-called ‘one-time pad’, proven by Claude Shannon to be unbreakable. Terra Quantum introduces the superfast quantum key distribution, establishing a practical realization of this procedure in the context of the modern superfast information communications service. The innovative Terra Quantum protocol, the superfast Boltzmann-Planck-protected secure information transmission, makes the electronically transmitted communication unbreakable in principle. The critical component of the proposed protocol is the change of the security paradigm based on quantum irreversibility. The standard approach utilizes the concept that an eavesdropper (Eva) can successfully use all the transmission line losses to decipher the communication. However, the lion’s share
Security experts have long worried that advances in quantum computing could eventually make it easier to break encryption that protects the privacy of people’s data. That’s because these sophisticated machines can perform calculations at speeds impossible for conventional computers, potentially enabling them to crack codes previously thought indecipherable.