NSA plans Quantum-Resistant Encryption
THE NEWS
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THE U.S. National Security Agency ( NSA) has released a document exploring the potential implications for national security following the arrival of a “brave new world” beyond the classical computing sphere.
Entitled “Quantum Computing and Post-Quantum Cryptography FAQs”, the document looks at the potential security concerns arising from the creation of a “Cryptographically Relevant Quantum Computer” (CRQC), a quantum-based supercomputer powerful enough to break current encryption schemes.
While these schemes are virtually impossible to crack with current supercomputers, a quantum computer poses a greater threat, due to the superposition states available to its computing unit, the qubit.
It’s not just the expected $26 billion value of the quantum computing sphere by 2030 that worries security experts, but the possibility of quantum systems falling into the hands of rogue entities.
The NSA oversees the safety of technological infrastructure in the U.S. and deals with both potential future threats and current ones. As the document says, “a CRQC would be capable of undermining the widely deployed public key algorithms used for asymmetric key exchanges and digital signatures. National Security Systems (NSS)—systems that carry classified or otherwise sensitive military or intelligence information— use public key cryptography to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of national security information. Without effective mitigation, the impact of adversarial use of a quantum computer could be devastating to our nation.”
The agency’s interest in quantum computing isn’t new. As part of the document trove leaked by former CIA employee Edward Snowden, it was revealed that the NSA invested $79.7 million in a research program titled “Penetrating Hard Targets”, which aimed to explore
whether a quantum computer that could break traditional encryption protocols was feasible at the time.
An algorithm that can be employed by a quantum computer to break traditional encryption schemes already exists in the form of Schor’s algorithm, which was first demonstrated in 1994. The only thing standing in its way is that it requires a much larger amount of qubits than is presently feasible. Quantum computing will change all that.
The answer lies in the creation and deployment of post-quantum cryptography— encryption schemes designed to thwart future CRQCs. These already exist, but at a time when the cryptographic security threat of quantum computing still lays beyond the horizon, implementing post-quantum cryptography
now would present issues in terms of the interoperability of current infrastructure. This would impact how different agencies and branches now share confidential information between themselves.
In the document, NSA says the choice of what type of postquantum cryptography should be implemented lies with the National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST).
But it admits that there’s no stopping the march of progress and it’s only a matter of time before quantum computing turns the security world on its head. “The intention is to remove quantum-vulnerable algorithms and replace them with a subset of the quantumresistant algorithms selected by NIST,” the NSA says.
Quantum is coming; Postquantum security must come before it.
The adversarial use of a quantum computer could be devastating to our nation