Could Chinese quantum computers break our encryption systems?

Has China broken AES and RSA encryption systems? A recent article by researchers at Shanghai University, published in the journal Chinese magazine of computersAnd prove that Quantum computersQuantum computers D-Wave can break some encryption methods. The vulnerability of current cryptographic algorithms to future quantum computers is known, and many researchers are currently working on “post-quantum cryptography.”

The researchers used D-Wave's quantum annealing system, combined with Ising and optimization models bilateralbilateral Quadratic Unbound Binding (QUBO) for factoring integers protected by RSA encryption. They were then able to decrypt data protected with 50-bit RSA encryption. RSA is mainly used for Digital signaturesDigital signatureswhile the more secure AES is used for the data. However, researchers have also shown that block ciphers here, rectangle and Gift-64 The algorithms used in AES encryption were weak.

RSA-50 is a very weak encryption

However, the risk must be qualified. If the work of Chinese researchers goes one step further, we are still far from the end of data security with current encryption. Modern RSA encryption uses 2048-bit keys. This represents a difference of 1998 bits. It's not 40 times bigger, it's 2¹⁹⁹⁸ Larger, or 2.87 x 10⁶⁰¹a 601-digit number.

The encryption used today to protect our data, when browsing the web or for any communication service, is therefore much more complex than the encryption discovered by researchers. As early as 2005, scientists were able to crack RSA encryption using a 640-bit key, although it took 80 processors and more than four months of calculations. If this advance is important for quantum computing, it does not call into question the security of our data, at least for now.