Comment on Breakthrough promises secure and private quantum computing at home
Danterious@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months agocouldn’t they get that with a regular computer?
Maybe not once quantum computers become more common.
Our current encryption methods can be represented as wave functions. This allows a sufficiently large quantum computer to solve for the keys in very little time.
There are new algorithms being developed that should defend against this. So you may still be correct.
However, delegating quantum computations to a server carries the same privacy and security concerns that bedevil classical cloud computing. Users are currently unable to hide their work from the server or to independently verify their results in the regime where classical simulations become intractable. Remarkably, the same phenomena that enable quantum computing can leave the server “blind” in a way that conceals the client’s input, output, and algorithm [6–8]; because quantum information cannot be copied and measurements irreversibly change the quantum state, information stored in these systems can be protected with information-theoretic security, and incorrect operation of the server or attempted attacks can be detected—a surprising possibility which has no equivalent in classical computing.
From the paper the article talks about
MagicShel@programming.dev 7 months ago
So regular cryptography is threatened by quantum computing, for sure. I imagine you’d wind up with some kind of quantum coprocessor like we used to have for math back in the day because quantum computing isn’t a replacement for current computers.
It would be interesting to see if having that capability locally would lead to finding other uses for it the way we did for GPUs and AI.
That said, I expect a long timeline for this to happen. We’ll see.
MonkderDritte@feddit.de 7 months ago
I don’t see that happen anytime soon. The theoretical advantage can’t be used because of practical disadvantages, so far.
MagicShel@programming.dev 7 months ago
Agreed, although I wonder how much further ahead state actors are compared to common knowledge. Standard encryption will be broken before most of us are aware, I think.
Umbrias@beehaw.org 7 months ago
There are plenty of quantum resistant cryptography methods that already exist and have existed for a decade or more.
dsemy@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Read the article, the whole point is making the connection the the cloud actually secure.
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
It’s still not your hardware, so you can’t rely on the data being private to you even if the connection is secure.
Then there’s going to be all the politics present with the location of whatever endpoint you connect to, issues of uptime and availability, etc.
It’s a matter of the threat model you’re concerned about, but this does not fill me with confidence if this is considered a “breakthrough solution”. There’s nothing quite like a half assed solution to kneecap work on a “proper” one.
dsemy@lemm.ee 7 months ago
From the article:
This is a breakthrough because this level of security is impossible currently (as you allude to in your comment).
Availability will still be an issue, of course.
MagicShel@programming.dev 7 months ago
I read it but I didn’t see anything about local quantum encryption. Originally my comment talked about that until I realized they are just talking about accessing cloud-based quantum encryption. So I immediately edited it not to look like an idiot. If I’m still missing something, let me know, but I am not seeing it.
dsemy@lemm.ee 7 months ago
My point is that the article is about making cloud quantum computing secure; the article doesn’t even mention quantum encryption.