# Tag Info

13

Well, cryptographers have been contemplating a post-quantum world for some time now. Quantum computing, although in its infancy as far as real-life computers go, has been studied in a theoretical sense for a quite a while. Shor's algorithm was published 19 years ago; Grover's, 17 years ago. These are the two most-famous quantum algorithms, I think, but the ...

7

Well, since I'm one of the authors on the paper, let me try to answer your question. First I should explain that the paper you link to is not the original paper proposing that approach, but rather the first implementation of it (in this case using quantum optics). The original paper which introduced the Universal Blind Quantum Computing (UBQC) protocol ...

5

With Grover's algorithm, quantum computers can brute-force a block cipher with $n$-bit keys using $2^{n/2}$ steps, which is much smaller than the regular effort ($2^n$). This means, for example, that AES-128 could be broken with $2^{64}$ steps, and that AES-256 would offer the same security that AES-128 offers currently. In short, key sizes would need to be ...

5

QKD aims at exchanging key material to be used with encryption based on OTPs between two parties and thus to achieve perfect secrecy for transmitted messages. There are, however, several drawbacks for practical use in a wired setting of QKD (required hardware and their vulnerability to hacks, limited distance which does not support end-to-end ...

3

I'm not going to exactly answer your question, because I have no idea. I simply do not know how fast the quantum computer is that NSA is building in secret. However I could explain why people recommend 256-bit security in the face of quantum computing using some numbers. If you feel that $2^{128}$ is a comfortable security against bruteforcing, remember ...

3

In fact, the basic idea of Shor's algorithm for the discrete logarithm problem is reasonably simple. Assume (as in Section 4 Discrete Log: the easy case of Shor's paper) that you have an efficient quantum algorithm for the Fourier transform. Then, applying this Fourier transform twice (once for $a$ and once for $b$) on a quantum superposition of values ...

3

No. The Yale result describes a method of partial measurement that is not completely destructive to the quantum system's coherence, which is tied to its physical representation. It is not a refutation of quantum indeterminacy, which is the basis for (provably secure) quantum key exchange. In other words, the Yale team measured a qubit in such a way that ...

2

The open source version of CyaSSL contains code that calls into the commercial NTRU library -- the library itself is missing of course. You might be able to make CyaSSL work with the open source NTRU implementation at https://github.com/tbuktu/libntru ; it's alpha level software though.

1

Adding more qubits does not increase the computation speed. A quantum computer with 4 qubits does not factorize faster than one with 2. The qubits are the "memory" of the quantum computer. More qubits mean you can factor bigger numbers. If I remember correctly, you need a superposition of $\Theta(N^2)$ terms, which means $\Theta(\log(N^2))$ qubits to factor ...

1

If the school has graduate courses that interest you and you think you can do well in (i.e. for comprehensive exams), and there is a strong crypto research group there, I would recommend any school that satisfied these criteria. As you move through academics, it becomes more and more clear that the quality of your research is the most important, and it is ...

1

All mathematical groups can be used to perform an ElGamal encryption, so that is a first kind of math. That's where elliptic curves are useful: they have a group structure. If you find a group, you can build a cryptosystem out of it. However, as @poncho pointed out, different groups have different properties with regards to security. For instance, elliptic ...

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