Thanks to QUBY, Cracking AES Just Got Easier Without a Quantum Computer
Hyperscale Data Center Storage And Quantum Computing
Excerpts and salient points ~
+ A Southern California startup, Active Cypher, has built a conventional computer with massive parallel processors (NVIDIA cards) running quantum algorithms, called QUBY. It was showing the system at Microsoft’s internal Ready and the RSA conference. The company was making the point that conventional encryption (RSA and AES) are nearing the end of their usefulness. Of course, a true quantum computer will be much more efficient running quantum algorithms than this device, but devices such as this demonstrate the coming vulnerability of current encryption.
Active Cypher’s Dan Gleason said in an interview that, “With just $600 in hardware QUBY has been able to demonstrate calculations that take years on conventional computers can be solved substantially quicker.”
+ He [Dan Gleason] goes on to say that, “Between quantum-optimized algorithms and artificial intelligence, cracking mathematically based cryptographic algorithms such as AES will become much easier. While executing a massive superposition of possible outcomes to these algorithms requires a quantum device in the millions of qubits—remember the largest quantum computer today has a mere 72 qubits—similar results can be derived with quantum-optimized algorithms executing within a computer emulator running on consumer gaming video cards.” Quantum emulators like QUBY, running highly optimized cracking algorithms will computationally accelerate the cracking of contemporary encryption algorithms.
+ Meanwhile research on quantum computers continues. UC Riverside said that they won a award of $3.75 M to focus on scalable quantum computing. There are efforts on quantum computing underway at many other Universities and companies in the US and around the world. According to Nature, by the start of 2019 private investors had funded at least 52 quantum-technology companies globally since 2012, many of them spun out from Universities. The October 2019 Nature article estimates that in 2017 and 2018 companies received at least $450 M in private funding. The infographic below shows the funding trends and international efforts.
Source: Forbes. Tom Coughlin, Hyperscale Data Center Storage And Quantum Computing…
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