US government developing ultimate cyber weapon

[Phil McCrevis]

US government developing ultimate cyber weapon; Prime-factoring quantum computing makes encryption obsolete.

http://www.naturalnews.com/036878_qu...t_secrets.html

[Hungry Man]

It makes specific types of encryption a lot easier to bruteforce. That's all. Not every form of encryption relies on prime factoring.

FWIW, Mike Adams (the maintainer of Natural News) has a bit of a reputation for being ill-informed and jumping to conclusions.

[chronomatic]

The article is BS. Quantum Computing only invalidates public-key algorithms like RSA and El Gamal. It doesn't have much effect on symmetric block ciphers like AES (it will halve the AES keyspace, so if you use AES-256, it will become AES-128, which is still very strong).

Moreover, the government is likely at least a decade away from getting a workable QC that actually does something other than factor the number 15.

[EncryptedBytes]

Originally Posted by chronomatic

Moreover, the government is likely at least a decade away from getting a workable QC that actually does something other than factor the number 15.

I'd argue even longer, at least a viable model.

[PaulyDefran]

If there's Quantum Decryption, won't there also be Quantum Encryption as well?

PD

[Hungry Man]

If there's Quantum Decryption, won't there also be Quantum Encryption as well?

The point of the encryption is that you can generate the key quickly but can't bruteforce it quickly. So encrypting it faster doesn't matter.

[danleonida]

Originally Posted by PaulyDefran

...won't there also be Quantum Encryption as well? PD

It is not needed! Encryption/decryption is easy and well within the computing capabilities of a cash register.

Bruteforcing... That's another story!

Keep it simple, public and use a long, disposable key. I heard somewhere that the first exiom of cryptography is something like: key longer than the plaintext, good luck if plaintext is long enough.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad

[LowWaterMark]

Off topic posts removed. Also, please don't cross post links to other threads to get them more attention. Not every thread about encryption needs a link to that same thread.