Quantum Computing : The Cyber-Security threat

Have you ever heard about IBM Q, Google Super-mercy or Microsoft Quantum Impact?

This is how the tech giants call their Quantum Computers. If you are wondering from the term "Quantum Computer", it's a computer that uses Qubits to process the input instead of using bits. In our traditional way of computing (Microprocessors or Arm-Based architecture) bits are holding ones and zeros to create digital electronics patterns to process data. a bit can be either one or zero at a time but when it comes to a Qubit it will take both positions simultaneously. This attitude of a Qubit is named as Quantum Superposition. To accelerate the computational power of Qubits there is another phenomenon called Quantum Entanglement. Quantum Entanglement happens when a pair of particles share their spatial proximity in a way that the state of a particle can not be described alone. Anyhow the public opinion about Quantum computers is "Still we are in an early stage" but I would not prefer to say that. In the current situation, Quantum computers are way faster than any of the microprocessors or arm-based architecture. I mean it's powerful enough to make Cyber-Security threats. The only concern here is we haven't got the opportunity to own one because of some reasons like its portability, operating temperature and the cost of production.

While thinking about information security the first thing that comes to everyone's mind is Cryptography. Of course, that's how we make sure that we are private. As we know the basic idea of cryptography is using an alternative secret code for each element in a data set that will be decrypted to the end-user who sees that with an access key. So far many things have changed from the traditional way of Symmetric encryption. The current world of Information security depends on complex mathematics algorithms and public/private key pairs of encryption. Since the Symmetric encryption is noticeably faster than the private/public key pairs, it's used in data storage centers and private/public key pairs are used in HTTPS protocols. But this kind of security checkpoints can be broken by trying all possible keys (cracking the algorithms). If you took 128-bit hashing for instance, it will have 2128 possible keys which will stress the world's fastest super-computer for trillions of years to guess the right key. Fortunately, we don't have that much of computational power up to now but it will happen anytime soon in the future. Apart from that security measures are calculated by humans. So there are some human errors while constructing a security feature. This kind of loop-holes leads the hackers to break into the system. What I am trying to say is every technology is vulnerable. Nothing is 100% safe. Along with that super-fast computational power of Quantum computers will accelerate the probability of break-in for sure.

You might think that "why don't we use the same computational power to make cryptography even stronger". Yes, we can. That's how it's. It will be a huge step forward in information security. our concern here is only about the existing cryptography. Not the future. U.S National Institute of Standards & Technology is evaluating more than 50 different quantum-cryptography. they call those methods as "Post-Quantum Cryptography". They are expecting to have a draft standard by early 2025 and some other researches also trying to do the same. So the important thing is this kind of security measures should take place before the world moves into day-to-day quantum computing. Actually, that's the expectation of everyone. I hope that will happen soon.

I would like to know what do you think about quantum computers? Do you think this is too early to worry about that? Please leave your answers in the comments.

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