US government developing ultimate cyber weapon

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

http://www.naturalnews.com/036878_quantum_computing_decryption_algorithms_government_secrets.html

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

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

PD

 

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.

 

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