Cryptography and Quantum Computing

By

 



Quantum mechanics: A term used heavily in pop culture to represent extremely complicated and state-of-the-art technology. “Quantum computing” is computation performed using a computing device based on the strange, counter-intuitive physical properties of matter at a very small scale, known as quantum mechanics. Unlike a traditional computer-based on transistors that work with data in binary digits (or “bits”) that can only be a “1” or a “0”, a quantum computer uses bits where a single qubit is able to encode itself as more than two states. The actual science behind it is too complicated for me to get into or even understand fully myself. The technology is starting to get more and more used in cryptography. “Quantum cryptography” is the science of exploiting quantum mechanical properties to perform cryptographic tasks. A prime example of this is “quantum key distribution”, which enables a secret cryptographic key to be shared between two remote parties such that any interception can be reliably detected.



Old Cryptography methods vs new (quantum): 

The public-key cryptosystems that we use today are based on certain hard mathematical problems. To combat these limitations, quantum technology is being used to decrypt and encrypt bits. Many universities, companies, and government agencies around the world are racing to do this, using a variety of different experimental techniques – some techniques may turn out to be more viable than others, or have specific properties that are useful for certain classes of application. It is possible to create algorithms that run significantly faster on a quantum computer than a classical computer, due to the unique properties of quantum bits. These algorithms could be used for a number of different scientific and business applications and will bring many benefits. Some of these algorithms have already been tested and proven on prototype quantum computers, but will not be practically useful or economical until larger quantum computers have been built.

An illustration to visualize the comparison:



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Make way for GPLV3

By
  GPLv3 is the new GPLv2 A little more than a decade ago, when GPLv3 was first introduced, a debate sparked between the fans of GPLv2 and GPLv3. Linus Torvald, the inventor of Linux, sided with GPLv2 and wrote several emails and threads on why his choice is justified. Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation, chose GPLv3 as his license of choice between the two. The main reason why Torvald didn't approve of the new and improved version of the GPL license was the overreaching aspects it contained. GPLv2 allowed hardware manufacturers to embed a signature key in their chips which would be needed to run free software on a machine. This specific signature key however limited the flexibility of the developer community since they couldn't update or modify the code and run it on the same machine. This limitation set forth by hardware manufacturers was likened by Linus and his followers. GPLv3 tackled this constraint by including an anti-tivoization clause in the l...
Read more

When a code rot can be the difference between life and death.

By
Image
 In 2018, a 9-year-old girl who had type-1 diabetes her entire life was being misled by her trusty medical applications on her smartphone. If these misleadings were not investigated by her father, Jeremy Vaughn,  she could have faced critical and fatal medical consequences.  Her medical check-up app with a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) failed.  “Features were disappearing, critical alerts weren’t working, and notifications just stopped,” he stated. As a result, his nine-year-old daughter, who relied and lived her whole life on the CGM alerts, had to live on instincts.  These apps were downloaded by Jeremy in 2016 for his daughter but by 2018, despite regular updates, these apps were now outdated and almost non-functioning. Jeremy checked the reviews on these apps and several patients had complained about malfunctioning apps and how they directly affected their health in a critical way. All this was due to the rotting code in these applications. They were regu...
Read more

Privacy and Personal Data

By
Image
  Data privacy or information privacy is a branch of data security concerned with the proper handling of data – consent, notice, and regulatory obligations. More specifically, practical data privacy concerns often revolve around how the data is being shared with third parties and the legality of its collection and storage. The world runs on transactions. Buying and selling. What's more important than introducing your product in a new market to try and gather customers? Introducing your product in a new market with guaranteed customers. And how are these customers guaranteed? Big Data.  When you shop at Amazon, do you ever see a "customers like you also bought ...."? The item being introduced to you have a higher chance of being sold than to a random customer. It's very simple in how it works, but extremely effective. Look at it this way: A company "X" does not have any information on its customers and their interests. In contrast, a company "Y" has...
Read more