Research: Quantum Computers Can Decipher Private Keys of Cryptocurrencies

[enrique11]

https://cryptoslate.com/research-quantum-computers-can-decipher-private-keys-of-cryptocurrencies/

 

Sometimes I wonder about the timing of these articles - just when the market was showing significant recovery. ?

Edited July 16, 2018 by enrique11

[Guest]

“It is fair to assume that we are safe for at least the next ten years.”

ASSUME! Great. Let's put all the world's financial flows into crypto based on hope and wishes.

No, we need to develop provably q-secure methods. Maybe randomness-based ciphers can be one such tool in the arsenal. Using q-randomness as a defense to sort of fight quantum fire with quantum flames. I just don't see any other way of escaping the perpetual "smarter attacker" problem.

[Sukrim]

How is this news?

Anyways, @zerpdigger, can you link to or name a few of these randomness based ciphers? So far I only heard that probabilistic hash based signature schemes or lattice ciphers are probably quantum proof, I haven't yet read about entropy based ones.

[Amigo]

7 minutes ago, zerpdigger said:

“It is fair to assume that we are safe for at least the next ten years.”

ASSUME! Great. Let's put all the world's financial flows into crypto based on hope and wishes.

No, we need to develop provably q-secure methods. Maybe randomness-based ciphers can be one such tool in the arsenal. Using q-randomness as a defense to sort of fight quantum fire with quantum flames. I just don't see any other way of escaping the perpetual "smarter attacker" problem.

I guess the answer is just use quantum computers as validators as well (along with the cryptographic functions). Then it’s a level playing field again (quantum against quantum).

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Sukrim said:

How is this news?

Anyways, @zerpdigger, can you link to or name a few of these randomness based ciphers? So far I only heard that probabilistic hash based signature schemes or lattice ciphers are probably quantum proof, I haven't yet read about entropy based ones.

i've been reading about trans-vernam ciphers from a conceptual/high-level pov but my deep technical understanding IS limited, anyway...

short blurb: https://medium.com/@bitmintnews/trans-vernam-ciphers-a-new-dimension-for-modern-cryptography-333bad7ca1a4

long paper: http://worldcomp-proceedings.com/proc/p2016/ICM3312.pdf

Quote

We presented here a philosophy and a practice for 'Cryptography of Things' (CoT) -- means to facilitate data security associated with things-nodes in the IP protocol. The CoT is mindful of processing parsimony, maintenance issues, and security versatility. The basic idea is to shift the burden of security away from power-hungry complex algorithms to variable levels of randomness matching the security needs per transmission. This paper presents the notion of Trans-Vernam Ciphers, and one may expect a wave of ciphers compliant with the TVC paradigm. It's expected that the IoT will become an indispensable entity in our collective well being, and at the same time that it should attrack the same level of malice and harmful activity experienced by the Internet of People, and so, despite its enumerated limitations, the IoT will require new horizons of robust encryption to remain a positive factor in modern civil life.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Amigo said:

I guess the answer is just use quantum computers as validators as well (along with the cryptographic functions). Then it’s a level playing field again (quantum against quantum).

that's the goal... not perfection, but to re-level the playing field, as right now malicious/state hackers etc have the advantage of security (in general)... and it's not just that they CAN get ahead and then everyone has to run around patching things and finding the vulnerabilities, it's just as bad that it's hard to KNOW IF/WHEN an attack has occurred as we're constantly playing catchup

i mean if bitcoin were compromised at a fundamental level (*IF*), theres no reason to know about it... sure there may emerge clues eventually, but the point is the attack vectors cannot be known, only assumed/guessed, and then a constant one-upmanship battle commence where we just "hope" we're ahead, and say "look see it hasnt been hacked YET! so therefore it's GREAT!" whereas actually, that's a terrifying idea! we need to at least be able to proveably formalize the playing field of POSSIBLE attacks, then find ways to mitigate them, again, in a formal logical manner rather than a constant tactical game

[enrique11]

2 hours ago, zerpdigger said:

“It is fair to assume that we are safe for at least the next ten years.”

ASSUME! Great. Let's put all the world's financial flows into crypto based on hope and wishes.

No, we need to develop provably q-secure methods. Maybe randomness-based ciphers can be one such tool in the arsenal. Using q-randomness as a defense to sort of fight quantum fire with quantum flames. I just don't see any other way of escaping the perpetual "smarter attacker" problem.

All I know is that my Cardano investment is hopefully safe. I intentionally invested in at least one quantum resistant crypto in case this quantum BS "escapes into the wild" and catches up with the crypto space.  I hope that most susceptible protocols in the future can be updated easily  to protect against such attacks (that the hardfork for such an update doesn't require a lot of fundamental rewriting of the source code).

Edited July 16, 2018 by enrique11