Podcast
Root Causes 05: Cryptographic Quantum Apocalypse


Hosted by
Tim Callan
Chief Compliance Officer
Jason Soroko
Fellow
Original broadcast date
February 7, 2019
As quantum computing continues to progress, the world's widespread cryptographic schemes are in danger. To prepare for the cryptographic "Quantum Apocalypse" we will need to replace our RSA- and ECC-based schemes with a new set of ciphers.
Podcast Transcript
Lightly edited for flow and brevity.
I think, Tim, where we’re going with this is that a lot of people have been talking about about quantum computing and the super position of quantum computing. Unlike traditional computers with traditional bits of zero or one, a qubit (or a quantum bit) can be zero or one but can also represent some super position of that and, interestingly enough, can even become entangled and can even interfere with one another. So qubits have very interesting properties. For our purposes today in this conversation it’s about what happens when not only encryption is easy but the code breaking of traditional encryption algorithms is also easy.
In other words, what’s the security shelf life? Is x. y is how long will it take to retool, or what’s your migration time? And z is what this podcast is about today. z is how long will it take for large scale quantum computing to be built. In other words, that is the collapse time. That is the apocalypse and I think one of the challenging things for people is to really define what z really is.
So how do you make yourself more resistant to that algorithm? Well you could just take RSA and instead of having RSA 2048-bit encryption you could knock up that bit. Knock that number of bits up incredibly high. The problem is you now have a very difficult to deal with bit of cryptographic material.
Because that’s the point at which we’re going to have this Quantum Apocalypse. That’s following a fairly stable rate. It’s not quite like Moore’s Law in which it’s very exponential. It is following more or less, let’s call it a...
We also have another quote. Simon Benjamin said at a conference in London back in September 2017, if someone is willing to go “Manhattan Project,” you could probably get to that date by about six to twelve years from now.
And reasonable can sometimes mean a month or two. Instead of it being 100 years, it is within our lifetime and definitely within a year or two. Here’s an interesting thing that a lot of people also don’t realize: It doesn’t affect all cryptography the same way. Hash methods such as AES or Triple DES or SHA, the current most modern version of SHA. These are quantum resistant just by their definition in that they’re not susceptible to Shor’s algorithm, but quantum computing might render the need for hashing algorithms to need larger bits. So that’s another interesting piece that I think a lot of people might be missing in this story.
But I think the industry as a whole has already gone through a world where we’ve had to think about this. We’ve had to have a concept of cryptographic agility. So I think for hashing functions specifically we’ve already gone through the exercise of going, “Hey, we need to either change the algorithm or up our bits.”
But I think for RSA and for Elliptic Curve, these are ubiquitous and therefore it is obviously something that we really need to think hard about. And I think in future podcasts, Tim, what we will be talking about are if it’s not going to be RSA, traditional RSA and it’s not going to be Elliptic Curve, if we can’t do encryption by prime numbers anymore starting around 2026 as an example, then what are the new quantum resistant algorithms that are out there? What are their maturity levels? Therefore, once you answer that question, you can start to get a clearer picture of, what will the Quantum Apocalypse look like? Will it be like a Y2K situation where it just kind of blows over, or are we really in trouble? Those we’ll explore down the road.
One little teaser: You talked about these quantum resistant algorithms. Is there a clear path forward? Or are there a set of clear paths forward that are good options algorithmically, or is this still an open question?
In other words, it’s sound as an encryption method. That’s one of the things that, to paraphrase it, needed to be solved in Fermat’s Last Theorem. Just as a factoid. In other words, the bedrock of truth and the bedrock of knowledge that the mathematical thinking and tradition that went on behind our current encryption methods is very, very solid.

