Chinese quantum computing.. Can you decipher all the world's codes with the push of a button?

Translation introduction:

A Chinese paper published late last year claimed that the encryption technology we rely on for our financial transactions and emails could be hacked using a quantum computer of relatively modest capacity.

What might such a development mean?

Is it really real or just Chinese propaganda?

This is what Patrick Tucker, technology editor at Defense One, tries to explore in this article.

Translation text:

Late last year, a group of Chinese scientists published a paper claiming that modern encryption can be hacked by combining classical and quantum computing techniques with a sufficiently powerful quantum computer.

And if the research paper is to be believed, then the danger of this jump will not be limited to the US military and its intelligence contacts only, but will also extend to financial transactions and text messages on our mobile phones.

As one quantum technology expert put it simply: "If what the Chinese researchers claim is true, the result will be catastrophic."

But that alleged jump may be an exaggeration. The paper, which is currently under peer review, claims to have found a way to use a 372-qubit quantum computer (qubit is the quantum version of the bit on which modern computing is based)* to parse numbers. It is made up of 2048 bits in the encryption system used by organizations such as militaries, banks and mobile app makers, and then decrypts it.

This is undoubtedly significant, given that quantum experts predicted that a leap of this kind would require a much larger quantum computer to decipher the RSA algorithm on which most of our current code relies.

IBM already has a quantum processor with a capacity of 433 qubits, but Chinese researchers claim to have achieved this feat by using their own smaller-capacity quantum computer to upgrade the traditional "factor analysis algorithm" developed by the German mathematician.

Worrying results

Most disturbing in the paper is the idea that the basic encryption protocols currently in use could be compromised by existing or soon-to-be simple computers.

(Shutterstock)

The Chinese paper states: “According to our estimations, a quantum circuit containing 372 qubits is necessary for our algorithm to challenge our 2048-bit RSA algorithm. Our study shows promising possibilities to speed up the application of quantum computers, which are currently fraught with noise, and pave the way for quantum computer analysis. Incredibly large integers have a real impact on the world of cryptography."

Lawrence Gassman, founder and president of Inside Quantum Technology, an expert in quantum technology and communications, said he was somewhat skeptical of the Chinese paper's findings, but believed it was "important for researchers in the West to draw real and serious conclusions about the paper's findings." .

Gassmann said that the most disturbing thing in the paper is the idea that the basic encryption protocols in use today can be hacked by simple computers that already exist or will exist soon, without requiring the use of a far-fetched quantum computer that will appear only in the distant future (as many experts previously believed). *.

"If you look at the road map of the world's major quantum computer companies, you will find that it talks about reaching that mighty machine that the Chinese talk about as the main goal of their research efforts. To be honest, I don't know. It could actually happen in a year's time." Or two years, and I'm inclined to think that jump will happen soon."

Gassman added that he was not reassured by the numbers mentioned in the paper: "There is a lot of controversy around these numbers."

“There is a general consensus in the cryptography and quantum research community that while there is no These claims can be proven true, at the same time there is no conclusive evidence that the Chinese algorithm cannot be successfully scaled up.I share your skepticism about the results of the Chinese paper, but we have to remain concerned about the possibility of this algorithm working successfully in the end, and then its effect will be Catastrophically. Even if the algorithm doesn't work, a quantum computer will be designed to be efficient enough to run Shor's algorithm, a method of analyzing very large numbers used by RSA systems.

Cheng ended his speech by adding:

Defense One reached out to several experts in the US government, who declined to disclose their comments regarding the Chinese paper.

But Scott Aronson, a professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin (Texas), was stricter about the paper and its results when he wrote about it on his blog in early January, when he said: “It seems to me that this approach needs a miracle.” If he wanted to achieve any benefit (…) and if a copy of the Schnorr algorithm was able to hack the “RSA” algorithm, it would have already done so a long time ago.In sum, the Chinese paper is one of the most misleading research papers in the field of quantum computers that I have seen in 25 years. A year, and I've seen a lot, a lot."

Should we worry?

While China is ahead of the United States in some areas of quantum science and quantum computers, the United States has the lead in several other areas of those sciences.

(Getty Images)

Is this paper, then, pure fraud, a warning of disaster, or something in between?

Gassman points out that the political race to reach quantitative supremacy is intensifying and the gap between the Americans and the Chinese is narrowing, stressing that it is unusual for the Chinese research community to make such a bold and easily debunked false claim.

Gassman described most of the research published in quantum science outside China as fairly “traditional,” and added that it was unlikely that China would jeopardize its position as a pioneer in quantum science and publish a paper containing nothing but nonsense (as its critics have claimed): “We cannot say The Chinese are pretenders or it is nothing more than a competition with the West or with the United States."

Gassmann adds that while China is ahead of the United States in some areas of quantum science and the science of quantum computers, having established the "fastest" quantum computer in the world, the United States has the lead in several other areas of these sciences.

But even if the conclusions of this paper turn out to be false, it serves as a warning of what's to come.

The US government has grown increasingly concerned about the speed with which basic encryption standards are becoming obsolete in the face of a true quantum leap.

And last May, the White House asked federal agencies in the country to move quickly toward secure quantum encryption in their digital operations.

But this move may not be enough now, too late.

Cheng said: "We must be prepared for the first cryptographic quantum computer to be secret. It is likely that we will not know immediately about the creation of a high-powered computer as soon as it appears. As the nuclear weapon does, for example, it will be more like a puzzle solution; it will come in the form of an earthquake-but-silent transformation.

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This article is translated from Defense One and does not necessarily reflect the location of Meydan.

Translated by: Karim Mohamed.