Quantum-safe cryptography
Phong Q. Nguyen1.
There has been significant investment in building a universal quantum computer for the past few years.
Although the exact power of a quantum computer has yet to be determined, we already know that its
impact on cryptography would be dramatic: Shor’s 1994 breakthrough results implied that a quantum
computer would solve integer factoring and discrete logarithms in polynomial time, thereby breaking
RSA and elliptic-curve cryptography, which are the only public-key cryptosystems currently deployed
to secure the Internet. This threat is now taken seriously: in early 2016, the NIST announced an open
international competition for post-quantum public-key cryptography standards, i.e. algorithms resistant
to quantum computers, with proposals due by late 2017.
Affiliation:
- University of Tokyo, Japan