Sometime around 2010, sophisticated malware known as Flame hijacked the mechanism that Microsoft used to distribute updates to millions of Windows computers around the world. The malware—reportedly jointly developed by the US and Israel—pushed a malicious update throughout an infected network belonging to the Iranian government. The …
Google says that it will fully transition to post-quantum cryptography by 2029. I think this is a good move, not because I think we will have a useful quantum computer anywhere near that year, but because crypto-agility is always a good thing. Slashdot thread. [...]
Building a utility-scale quantum computer that can crack one of the most vital cryptosystems—elliptic curves—doesn’t require nearly the resources anticipated just a year or two ago, two independently written whitepapers have concluded. In one, researchers demonstrated the use of neutral atoms as reconfigurable qubits that have …
Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard have won the 2026 Turing Award for inventing quantum cryptography. I am incredibly pleased to see them get this recognition. I have always thought the technology to be fantastic, even though I think it’s largely unnecessary. I wrote up my thoughts back in …
Google is dramatically shortening its readiness deadline for the arrival of Q Day, the point at which existing quantum computers can break public-key cryptography algorithms that secure decades' worth of secrets belonging to militaries, banks, governments, and nearly every individual on earth. In a post published on Wednesday, Google …
I’m skeptical about—and not qualified to review—this new result in factorization with a quantum computer, but if it’s true it’s a theoretical improvement in the speed of factoring large numbers with a quantum computer. [...]
Signal has just rolled out its quantum-safe cryptographic implementation. Ars Technica has a really good article with details: Ultimately, the architects settled on a creative solution. Rather than bolt KEM onto the existing double ratchet, they allowed it to remain more or less the same as it had been …
Peter Gutmann and Stephan Neuhaus have a new paper —I think it’s new, even though it has a March 2025 date—that makes the argument that we shouldn’t trust any of the quantum factorization benchmarks, because everyone has been cooking the books: Similarly, quantum factorisation is performed …
Cybersecurity practitioners are voicing concerns over a recent executive order issued by the White House that guts requirements for: securing software the government uses, punishing people who compromise sensitive networks, preparing new encryption schemes that will withstand attacks from quantum computers, and other existing controls. The executive order (EO …
Microsoft is updating Windows 11 with a set of new encryption algorithms that can withstand future attacks from quantum computers in a move aimed at jump-starting what’s likely to be the most formidable and important technology transition in modern history. Computers that are based on the physics of …