There is a saying in the computer world that the most secure thing for protecting our data is encryption. We know that it is very hard to break encryption which comes in various forms such as 64-bit, 128-bit and so on.
However, a new study reveals that a quantum computer can break the encryption of the highest form which is 2048-bit encryption. Not only that, this encryption can be broken in just 8 hours.
Talking about quantum computers, people already feared that they can crack various codes used for sending messages. But it was not known that it can also break encryption. If you don’t know about encryption, it is a method through which you can hide messages from hackers.
Once we send messages to someone, they are converted from plain text to encrypted form. Similarly, a message we receive is also converted from plain text to encrypted text. However, we receive a message in plain text because it is once again converted from encrypted to plain form.
Now, this process of converting messages from encrypted to plain form and vice-versa is very secure because it requires a unique code to be shared between both parties. Thus, you cannot break encryption if you don’t know the code and you will have to apply the longer method. But now, it is found out that quantum computers take much lesser time to break encryption than traditional computers.
The study also reveals that it will give a hard time for government organizations who wanted to keep their data secure for 25 years or longer. Because with quantum computers, the encrypted data will not be secure anymore.
Now, this method of breaking encryption is called modular exponentiation which is simpler and efficient than earlier methods. This study has been done by Gidney and Ekerå who show how quantum computers can do this task in under 8 hours.