Four methods out of 69 were chosen – three with Max Planck participationĪ total of 69 international teams from the cryptography community have submitted proposals for new cryptographic techniques to NIST to protect data traffic against quantum computer attacks in the future – they are calling it post-quantum cryptography. Conventional cryptography relies on prime number factorization because contemporary computers would need tens of thousands of years to do the necessary calculations and would also consume as much energy as the sun sends to the earth in the same period. For example, they will be able to break down any large number into prime factors in an instant. It is true that quantum computers are still being developed, and it is not yet foreseeable when the first powerful computers of this kind will come into service, but one thing is certain as Peter Schwabe, Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy and professor at the Radboud University Nijmegen explains: "As soon as the first quantum computers arrive, today's cryptographic protocols, which protect virtually all data traffic, will become obsolete because quantum computers will be able to solve the two mathematical problems on which today's cryptographic methods are based". But online service providers that rely on secure data exchanges also see it as a threat. For many people – and certainly for many of the world's intelligence services – the quantum computer holds great promise.
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