Living in a Pre-Quantum World
Fearing the Post-Quantum Fallout
We are currently living in a pre-quantum world, where data is being harvested at alarming rates. No data is safe from this tactic which “harvests now, for decryption later”, when quantum computers are available. This is particularly alarming when you consider that even the US government’s long-term secrets are not safe from exposure and exploitation in a post-quantum society.
Analysts at Booz Allen Hamilton, a globally recognized consulting firm, warn that “Chinese hackers could also steal pharmaceutical, chemical and material science research that can be processed by quantum computers – machines capable of crunching through numbers at unprecedented speed. Encrypted data with intelligence longevity, like biometric markers, covert intelligence officer and source identities, social security numbers, and weapons’ designs, may be increasingly stolen under the expectation that they can eventually be decrypted,” the report says. It goes on to say “state-aligned cyber threat actors will start to steal or intercept previously unusable encrypted data.”[1]
“The threat of a nation-state adversary getting a large quantum computer and being able to access your information is real,” says Dustin Moody, a mathematician at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). “The threat is that they copy down your encrypted data and hold on to it until they have a quantum computer.” Adversaries and nation states are likely doing it,” he says. “It’s a very real threat that governments are aware of. They’re taking it seriously and they’re preparing for it.”[2]
That’s why in 2016, the US government tasked NIST to find solutions to this looming and likely disaster. Although in 2022, NIST, through contest driven initiatives, awarded four encryption winners, that introduced post-quantum safe (PQS)technologies, the permanent solution or quantum secure technologies seems to still be in the future.
Quantum Safe vs Quantum Secure
What is Quantum Safe?
Post-quantum cryptographic algorithms, such as the four NIST winners mentioned above, are being referred to as “quantum safe.” It is important to note that all four of NIST’s encryption technologies have computational based keys, as NIST’s approach to PQC seems to be to develop more mathematically complex solutions, that are supposedly too difficult for even a quantum computer to crack. The quantum safe pronouncement is a conditional-secure assumption that there is not and will never be sufficient computational power to break the math heavy code. Several of the NIST finalists were hacked, some rather quickly after being publicly released.
What is Quantum Secure?
A cryptosystem that is truly quantum secure provides unconditional security, also referred to as information-theoretic security. To be quantum secure or unconditionally secure, a cipher system must be proven safe against an attack from any adversary that has unlimited resources. In other words, it doesn’t matter how powerful a computer becomes, or what types of mathematics are used, a quantum secure solution is one that has mathematical proof that there is no way to successfully break it. Is such an encryption technique possible? Does such an encryption exist?
In 1946, Claude Shannon introduced this concept with his work on perfect secrecy, where he mathematically proved that a properly implemented One-Time Pad encryption algorithm is perfectly secure, as long as certain unconditional requirements are met.
JumPedal powered CipherBolt encryption technologies incorporate all required “Shannon must-haves” for a perfectly secure and unbreakable One-Time Pad:
- the key must be truly random;
- the key must be as large or larger than the plaintext;
- the key must never be reused in whole or part;
- and the key must be kept secret.
Our technology provides quantum secure encryption that meets Shannon’s four unconditional requirements and also passes NIST’s tests for determining random number generation.
[1] chinese-threats-quantum-era.pdf
[2] technologyreview.com/2021/11/03/1039171/hackers-quantum-computers-us-homeland-security-cryptography/
