Recent Claims coming from China
Recently, researchers at Shanghai University have attracted attention when they claimed to have broken the RSA encryption. A lot of questions were raised regarding its capability of hurting military and banking, and even cryptocurrency security. According to tech YouTuber Mental Outlaw, these are highly exaggerated since the breakthrough is not capable of threatening present encryption standards.
Analysing the Quantum Experiment
The Chinese research team that performed the experiment managed to factorize, with the help of a quantum computer, a 22-bit integer-2,269,753. That was beyond what earlier quantum computing projects had achieved, but peanuts compared to what classical computers have done so far: classical systems have cracked 892-bit encryption keys, though the process required considerable computational power over a long period-2,700 physical core years, to be exact.
The Scale of Modern
Mental Outlaw says that while the experiment was an important milestone, it is very far from breaking modern encryption standards. For example, early RSA encryption, in common usage decades ago, used 512-bit keys; however, in 2015 all encryption systems migrated to newer, stronger standards that have keys in lengths between 2048 and 4096 bits. In the Chinese experiment, the quantum computer managed to break just a 22-bit key, which barely meets the merit radical against these modern standards.
Physical Limitations of Quantum Computing One of the essential problems with quantum computers is that they must operate under extreme conditions: the qubits must be kept near absolute zero, between -200 to -270 degrees Centigrade, in order for them to be stable enough to serve as reliable processors. This requires extensive cooling systems, which are one of the major physical limitations on the practical application of quantum computers to the breaking of complex encryption.
What is more, Mental Outlaw pointed to yet another problem: most of the quantum bits in a system are spent for error correction, not for the solution of the main task. It means that the quantum computers cannot be efficient yet for such purposes as breaking encryption.
Quantum-Resistant Cryptography Push
Despite the limitations quantum computers currently face, the tech industry is preparing for a future in which they could become a threat to encryption. In July 2023, HSBC began exploring the addition of quantum-resistant banking infrastructure. IBM Quantum and Microsoft teamed up in September 2023 concerning the same-to explore post-quantum encryption safeguards. Most recently, early this year, Apple deployed quantum-resistant cryptography for iMessage.
Conclusion
Mental Outlaw reassures the reader that quantum computing is indeed progressing but isn’t yet much of a menace against modern encryption. But he cautions that brisk progresses might just alter this in some time. Technology firms are, for this reason, already seriously developing quantum-resistant solutions.
