Abstract
What would happen if all of the algorithms in public-key cryptography suddenly could be broken in seconds or minutes? Those algorithms, like RSA and elliptic curve cryptography are the ones that we depend on for Internet commerce. What if they were all of a sudden useless? Would society collapse? Would commerce be at an end? That is the promise and the danger of quantum computers .
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Notes
- 1.
Remember Schrödinger’s cat. The cat in the closed box may either be dead or alive. Only when the box is opened do we know which state the cat is in. Qubits work the same way. Only when you observe (measure) them do you know what state they are in. Until that point there is the probability they are in any of the other possible states.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
For a list of many quantum computing algorithms see https://math.nist.gov/quantum/zoo/
- 5.
- 6.
Wiesner did try to get a version of his idea with an application to quantum currency published, but his paper was rejected. He resurrected his ideas a decade later and was finally able to get them published. This is the starting point for the Bennett and Brassard research that led to their 1984 paper.
- 7.
This is an admittedly over-simplified description of these physical concepts.
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Dooley, J.F. (2018). What Is Next in Cryptology?. In: History of Cryptography and Cryptanalysis. History of Computing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90443-6_15
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