Quantum Computing Threat

Full Title or Meme

Successful Quantum Computing creates an existential threat to existing cryptographic algorithms since quantum computing algorithms exist to crack traditionally intractable problems like factoring the multiplication of two large primes used in RSA.

Context

Public key cryptography relies on certain mathematical problems that are very hard to solve, such as factoring large numbers that are the product of large prime numbers or finding the discrete logarithm of a random elliptic curve element with respect to a publicly known base point. If you know the private key components, you can sign the document or decrypt the data. If you don't have the private key and cannot solve the math, you cannot sign the document or decrypt the data.

Problems

• Good summary by some of the giants in the field have determined that Artificial Intelligence adds to the growing threat from Quantum computing to make breaks even more probable in 2024.
• Many systems exist which depend on existing public key technology. Some of these are embedded in hardware that cannot be changed once deployed.
• Existing signatures or encrypted files will continue to need to be processed for many years to come. Certificate keys have a life time of up to 25 years.
• The approval process for new cryptographic algorithms takes many years of standardization and test to be sure that the work effort to brake them is sufficiently high.
• Most of the challenges to the Quantum Computing Threat are to be found in the current reliance on Public Key Cryptography for protecting the internet. See that page for more details on this particular threat.

Solutions

Public Key Cryptography has many benefits over Secret Key Cryptography, the effort to create new algorithm to preserve the current PK protocols is underway now triggers for deprecation of RSA and some EC have already been set to the publication of new QR standards by NIST. It is now expected that the RSA and EC algorithms will be accepted by the government until 2035. These dates are subject to revision.

Here is a good summary of the solutions from Cloudflare.

Post Quantum Cryptography

This section details current efforts to address the threat to existing computing and networking infrastructures with most recent at the top of the list.

• Past transitions from one crypto framework to another have been ad hoc and uncovered challenges caused by a lack of foresight into the challenges. Many deployments using cryptography have been optimized with different layers of the deployment handling different parts of the workload. As is usual with such optimizations, agility is severely reduced. It is unclear where such framework could or should be designed, academia has not considered agility an interesting problem. The US government is not engaged in creating a network of cloud providers might be willing to create some sort of framework that would address their issue. Industry tends to let the smaller players provider cryptographic solutions which are not optimized for their users.

  ...there is a glaring gap in the mix: our cryptography does not come with frameworks that prepare us for and facilitate transition. Without comprehensive frameworks, this manual effort to make a transition becomes an overwhelming challenge, and one that tens of thousands of organizations worldwide, even with security savvy operations teams, struggle to put into practice.

• The state of the post-quantum Internet The state as determined by CloudFlare on 2024-03-05 basically says that we need to have PQC deployed by EOY 24, which means that the first users can be expected on the date to find support from the services.
• Post-Quantum Cryptography for Engineers IETF 2023-08-30 draft-ietf-pquip-pqc-engineers-00
• Migration to Post-Quantum Cryptography The National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) (Preliminary Draft 2023)
• H.R.7535 - Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act (2022-12-21) requires OMB to get plans in place one year after NIST creates a new set of standards.
• NSA Releases Future Quantum-Resistant (QR) Algorithm Requirements for National Security Systems released 2022-09-07 and existing RSA and EC algorithms will be deprecated automatically when new specs for CRYSTALS-Kyber and CRYSTALS-Dilitium are released.
• Announcing the Commercial National Security Algorithm Suite 2.0
• NIST Selects Post-Quantum Algorithms for Standardization (2022-07-13)
• NIST Announces First Four Quantum-Resistant Cryptographic Algorithms US agency reveals the first group of winners from its six-year competition. (2022-07-05)

  The four algorithms contribute to NIST’s ongoing post-quantum cryptographic standard and will be finalized in roughly two years. They are available on NIST’s website, and are referred to as Crystals-Kyber, Crystals-Dilithium, Falcon and SPHINCS+.

• CRYSTALS = The "Cryptographic Suite for Algebraic Lattices" (CRYSTALS) encompasses two cryptographic primitives: Kyber, an IND-CCA2-secure key-encapsulation mechanism (KEM); and Dilithium, a strongly EUF-CMA-secure digital signature algorithm. Both algorithms are based on hard problems over module lattices, are designed to withstand attacks by large quantum computers, and have been submitted to the NIST post-quantum cryptography project.
• Quantum-safe cryptography fundamentals, current developments and recommendations Federal Office for Information Security (2021-10)
• Post-Quantum Encryption: A Q&A With NIST’s Matt Scholl 2021-10-27
• Crypto Agility: Considerations for Migrating to Post-Quantum Cryptographic Algorithms NCCoE 21-06-05 cue on 2021-07-07
• Getting Ready for Post-Quantum Cryptography: NIST 2021-04-28 - Exploring Challenges Associated with Adopting and Using Post-Quantum Cryptographic Algorithms
• MIGRATION TO POST-QUANTUM Cryptography William Barker, Murugiah Souppaya NIST 2021-06
• "Report on Post-Quantum Cryptography"
• ImperialViolet: Post-quantum confidentiality for TLS (2018-04-11)

Post Quantum Status

• Post-quantum cryptography is too damn big. 2024-03-22 "there has not been enough discussion about how what NIST has standardized is simply not good enough to deploy on the public web in most cases."
• Mastodon picked P
• Apple picked pq3 - PQ3 is the first messaging protocol to achieve what Apple calls “Level 3 security.”
• NSA site is updated from time to time

References

Other Material

• For more information on Quantum Information Theory see that page in this wiki.
• It is likely that this threat was known to the NSA in Summer 2015 based on their action on Suite B.