Meanwhile, a longer-term effort takes a can’t-beat-’em-join-’em approach: using quantum technology to build a more secure, quantum internet. National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, aims to release new standards for such post-quantum cryptography algorithms next year. Scientists and mathematicians are now working urgently to prepare for that unknown date by devising new ways of encrypting data that won’t be susceptible to quantum decoding. Plus, no one knows when Y2Q will arrive.Ĭonfronted with the Y2Q threat, cryptography - the study and the practice of techniques used to encode information - is facing an overhaul. The fix for Y2Q is much more complex than changing how dates are represented, and computers are now even more inextricably entwined into society than two decades ago. Y2Q is a similarly systemic issue, but in many ways, it’s not a fair comparison. The name Y2Q alludes to the infamous Y2K bug, which threatened to create computer havoc in the year 2000 because software typically used only two digits to mark the year ( SN: 1/2/99, p. “The stakes are just astronomically high,” says Mosca, of the University of Waterloo in Canada, who is also CEO of the cybersecurity company evolutionQ. Encryption even secures infrastructure such as power grids. Encryption is also woven into a plethora of physical devices that transmit information, from cars to robot vacuums to baby monitors. What does it mean?Įncryption pervades digital life - safeguarding emails, financial and medical data, online shopping transactions and more. “If that encryption is ever broken,” says mathematician Michele Mosca, “it would be a systemic catastrophe.” Y2Q is coming. That’s the year that quantum computers will gain the ability to crack the encoding schemes that keep electronic communications secure. Experts are spreading the word that it’s time to prepare for a milestone some are calling Y2Q. But with more powerful quantum machines being regularly rolled out by the likes of IBM and Google, scientists, governments and others are beginning to take action. Today’s quantum computers are far too puny to defeat current security measures. That means that once the quantum machines are powerful enough, they could crack the mathematical padlocks on encrypted data, laying bare the world’s secrets. In the 1990s, scientists realized that these computers could exploit the weird physics of the minuscule realm of atoms and electrons to perform certain types of calculations out of reach for standard computers. That information’s privacy relies on encryption, a way to mathematically scramble data to prevent any snoops from deciphering it - even with the help of powerful computers.īut the mathematical basis of these techniques is under threat from a foe that has, until recently, seemed hypothetical: quantum computers. Yet at every moment, untold volumes of private information are zipping along internet cables and optical fibers. There’s always someone who wants to get at the juicy details we’d rather keep hidden.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |