HACKER Q&A
📣 actinium226

How long until quantum computers break 512 bit RSA/ECDSA? 1024 bit?


The more detailed your answer the better!


  👤 combat-banana Accepted Answer ✓
Considering that at present “quantum computers” work based on quantum annealing (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_annealing) as opposed to handling quantum amplitudes directly, many many years. The weakness of RSA lies in being able to use the complex numbers found in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_amplitude to defeat the series.

Currently since their process is not able to predict or alter probability amplitudes, rather simply to read them… basically irrelevant.

In more simple terms they built a machine which can get data but the data they get is limited in and of itself. (Like being a user vs. an admin)


👤 ezekg
I'm pretty sure RSA 512 was broken a long time ago: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/10/break...

👤 koromak
AFAIK quantum computers currently can only handle a dozen qubits or less. So we can't really extrapolate about timeframes yet, there's not enough data points to draw a curve. It could happen this year, it could never happen.