WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF
In the world of breaking encryption not all is what it seems, but whatever the truth behind this story the Chinese do seem to be making progress on using quantum computers to break military grade encryption systems.
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A little while ago the US national security community and military had a major freak out when they thought that China had used a Quantum Computer – which in time could crack over 70% of the world’s most common encryption systems – to decrypt the encryption on a sensitive stolen database, and while the final analysis was sceptical this was the case now a few months on there may be cause for them to all freak out again after Chinese scientists have successfully mounted what they claim is the world’s first effective attack using a quantum computer on widely used encryption methods, according to a report from the South China Morning Post (SCMP). But, the researchers did acknowledge that limitations would hamper – at least for now – a full-on quantum hack, known as “Q-Day.”
The advance, led by Wang Chao of Shanghai University, poses a “real and substantial threat” to the security mechanisms used in banking and military sectors, as detailed in their peer-reviewed paper published on September 30 in the Chinese Journal of Computers, an academic journal run by the China Computer Federation (CCF).
The Future of Risk and Security, by keynote Matthew Griffin
Despite the general-purpose quantum computing field still being in its early stages, with no immediate risk to modern cryptographic systems, scientists are increasingly exploring specialized quantum computers for potential uses – and, in the case of cybersecurity, vulnerabilities. In their recent study, Wang’s team utilized a quantum computer from Canada’s D-Wave Systems to breach cryptographic algorithms, marking a significant milestone.
According to SCMP, the research team employed the D-Wave Advantage quantum computer to target the Present, Gift-64, and Rectangle algorithms, called key representatives of the Substitution-Permutation Network (SPN) structure. This structure is foundational for Advanced Encryption Standards (AES), a system widely deployed in military and financial encryption protocols, according to the newspaper. While AES-256 is often labelled as military-grade and considered the most secure encryption standard available, the study suggests that quantum computers may soon threaten such security.
“This is the first time that a real quantum computer has posed a real and substantial threat to multiple full-scale SPN structured algorithms in use today,” Wang’s team wrote. Given the sensitivity of the research, Wang declined to provide further comments to SCMP.
The D-Wave Advantage, initially designed for practical applications rather than cryptographic attacks, has been previously used by a range of companies and organizations to explore tasks in logistics and finance, for example. SCMP reports that the machine employs a technique known as quantum annealing, which simulates a process similar to metallurgy where materials are heated and cooled to increase strength. This method allows the computer to rapidly solve complex mathematical problems.
The principle behind quantum annealing involves searching for the lowest energy state, akin to guiding a ball through a landscape filled with hills and valleys. Traditional algorithms must explore every path, climbing and descending multiple times. However, quantum tunnelling — an effect where particles pass through barriers rather than over them — enables the quantum computer to find the lowest point more efficiently, bypassing obstacles that classical methods cannot.
Wang’s paper described this technique as similar to an Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm capable of optimizing solutions – including breaking encryption as we saw recently – on a global scale. His team combined the quantum annealing algorithm with conventional mathematical approaches to create a novel computational architecture. The significance of Wang’s work, according to SCMP’s anonymous expert, lies in framing a real-world encryption issue as a binary optimisation problem suitable for a quantum computer.
Despite this achievement, the researchers acknowledged the current constraints of quantum computing technology. In the report, Wang stated that while quantum computing shows promise, its development is hampered by environmental factors, immature hardware and the challenge of devising a single attack algorithm capable of breaching multiple cryptographic systems.
The study emphasises that while a quantum computer has not yet revealed the specific passcodes used in the algorithms tested, it is closer to doing so than previously achieved. As the technology advances, the researchers suggest that further developments could yield more robust quantum attacks. The ongoing evolution in quantum computing points to potential new vulnerabilities in existing cryptographic systems as scientists push the limits of what these machines can accomplish, SCMP reports.
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