Scientist Claims Quantum RSA-2048 Encryption Cracking Breakthrough (2024)

FAQs

Can quantum computers break RSA 2048? ›

"Breaking RSA is usually attempted by using Shor's algorithm in a quantum computer but there are no quantum computers in existence that can produce enough gates to implement Shor's algorithm that would break 2048 keys," Woodward said.

Alan Woodward, a professor of computer science at the University of Surrey, told BankInfoSecurity that no quantum computer in existence has enough gates to implement Shor's algorithm and break RSA-2048.

And how fast? Exponentially faster is very fast. Breaking a 2048-bit RSA key would take 1 billion years with a classical computer. A quantum computer could do it in 100 seconds.

By using special rules from quantum physics, Shor's algorithm can solve this puzzle much faster than regular computers. It works by finding patterns in numbers, which helps to unlock the secrets of those big numbers.

According to the recommendation of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the smallest RSA key size that can be considered secure is 2,048 bits. This means approximately 600 digits, but in many cases larger keys of 3,072 or 4,096 bits are also used.

Researchers typically estimate that it will be many years until quantum computers can crack cryptographic keys—the strings of characters used in an encryption algorithm to protect data—faster than ordinary computers.

The difference between RSA 2048 and RSA 4096 lies in their bit length, with RSA 2048 being 2048 bits long and RSA 4096 doubling that at 4096 bits, offering enhanced security at the cost of increased processing time. NIST deems RSA 2048 sufficient until 2030, balancing security strength and computational efficiency.

Messages can be encrypted by anyone, via the public key, but can only be decrypted by someone who knows the private key. The security of RSA relies on the practical difficulty of factoring the product of two large prime numbers, the "factoring problem". Breaking RSA encryption is known as the RSA problem.

Referencing the table linked above, a 1024-bit key has approximately 80 bits of strength, while a 2048-bit key has approximately 112 bits. Thus, it takes approximately 2¹¹²/2⁸⁰ = 2³² times as long to factor a 2048-bit key. In other words, it takes around four billion times longer to factor a 2048-bit key.

Specifically, a quantum computer could take a publicly available public key and derive the associated private key from it. This means that any data encrypted using that public key could now be decrypted without the consent of the party that sought to protect that data.

Will Bitcoin be hacked by quantum computers? ›

Can quantum computers break cryptocurrencies? It is possible that there will come a time, well into the future, when quantum computers could break the SHA-256 hashing algorithm that Bitcoin uses. However, if there were quantum computers that powerful, they could break virtually any existing encryption software.

AES256 is currently quantum resistant, and will remain so until quantum computers become at least an order-of-magnitude more powerful than the current cutting-edge technology in quantum computing.

Quantum computers can break RSA encryption, which secures our online data. But there are solutions that are resistant to quantum attacks. One of them is Freemindtronic, an Andorran company that notably uses NFC HSM technology to share AES-256 keys using RSA-4096 encryption, which quantum computers cannot decipher.

The current estimate is that breaking a 1,024-bit or 2,048-bit RSA key requires a quantum computer with vast resources. Specifically, those resources are about 20 million qubits and about eight hours of them running in superposition.

Shor's algorithm, a quantum algorithm used to factorize large numbers, poses significant threats to RSA, a widely used public key cryptosystem. RSA relies on the difficulty of factoring large semi-primes to keep its security.

Grover's algorithm is a quantum algorithm for unstructured data that provides a quadratic speedup in the computation over classical computing. This can result in AES-128 being feasible to crack, but AES-256 is still considered quantum resistant—at least until 2050, (as referenced throughout ETSI GR QSC 006 V1. 1.1.)

Classical quantum hybrid used to crack RSA encryption

The team say they cracked 48-bit RSA using a 10-qubit quantum computer-based hybrid system and could do the same for 2048-bit if they had access to a quantum computer with at least 372 qubits.

While the potential for quantum computing to disrupt traditional cryptographic systems is undeniable, proactive measures and crypto-agile infrastructure can mitigate these risks and ensure the resilience of blockchain networks in the face of emerging threats.