
Ask HN: If Quantum Computers Destroy Keypair Encryption, What Are Alternatives? - markhenderson
Every now and again I see an article like this pop up: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.technologyreview.com&#x2F;s&#x2F;609408&#x2F;quantum-computers-pose-imminent-threat-to-bitcoin-security&#x2F;<p>Let&#x27;s assume it&#x27;s true. Public &#x2F; Private keypair encryption (via cryptobox) is a big part of the backbone of an app I&#x27;m working on. Is there any way to future proof my crypto in case the Quantum Computers do destroy any security we thought we had?
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techjuice
More scientific research on the power of quantum computing against modern day
encryption would need to be done. There are still only a small amount of
companies with quantum computers, the bulk being defense contractors, top
governments (U.S.A., China, Russia, Japan, Germany, India, Iran and Israel)
and a few private sector focused companies (Google, Microsoft, IBM, etc.) and
top research universities that are capable of doing the research. If there is
a flaw found in the mathematics used for the current standard encryption
algorithms, new algorithms would be created to take their place. As rolling
your own crypto has always been bad practice if you did not have the proper
mathematics background and work experience as a full-time cryptographer.

It may require new hardware or enhancements to hardware to accommodate the
changes (e.g. AES instruction sets added to the x86, ARM, SPARC, MIPS, etc.
processors) to help speed up the processing of encryption and decryption
requests. When that time comes there will be a quick rush from vendors to
patch and or upgrade systems when possible.

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inp
A very good ressource: [https://pqcrypto.org/](https://pqcrypto.org/)

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quickthrower2
pq - nice doublentendre! Post quantum and p * q - prime numbers.

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quickthrower2
My question is what if someone is logging internet traffic right now to crack
post-quantum? They'd have the formidable challenge of deciding what to log of
all the stuff ... but spy agencies might be harvesting data for example.

Credit card transactions are ok but other secrets maybe not so ok.

