All articles tagged with #post quantum cryptography
Google Research warns that the quantum resources needed to break ECDLP-256 have fallen roughly 20-fold, potentially enabling on-spend attacks against Bitcoin within its 10-minute block window and prompting a 2029 migration to post-quantum cryptography; the industry, including Coinbase and the Ethereum Foundation, is coordinating on the transition, though the risk remains years away.
Google accelerated its so‑called Q Day to 2029, warning that quantum computers could break current encryption and calling for a broad move to post-quantum cryptography. The piece explains how qubits and quantum phenomena could outpace classical cryptography, notes noisy qubits as a current hurdle, and highlights Google’s leadership push while acknowledging industry questions about the timeline and motivation.
Google says rapid advances in quantum computing are shrinking the window to today’s encryption, setting a target of 2029 to migrate to post-quantum cryptography and urging the tech industry to accelerate secure upgrades amid fears of data being stored now and decrypted later.
Google moved the deadline for when quantum computers could break current cryptography to 2029, heightening the push toward post-quantum cryptography as researchers note a 2048-bit RSA key could be cracked with about one million noisy qubits—marking a potentially earlier shift in cybersecurity planning.
Google slashes its Q Day readiness deadline to 2029 and urges the industry to adopt post-quantum cryptography to replace RSA and elliptic-curve schemes. The company also reveals Android 17 beta will add PQC support via ML-DSA in verified boot, the Keystore, and upcoming Play Store signing, signaling a broader PQC rollout across devices; experts view the timeline as a significant acceleration with ongoing questions about motivation.
Google has announced a 2029 deadline to migrate its systems to post-quantum cryptography, citing growing quantum hardware capabilities that could undermine current encryption and digital signatures. While Bitcoin faces long-term cryptographic risk from quantum attacks like Shor’s algorithm, upgrading Bitcoin is a decentralized, multi-stakeholder effort that won’t happen overnight. Initiatives such as BIP 360 introducing Pay-to-Merkle-Root are beginning to prepare for quantum-resistant signatures, and some estimates suggest a sizable portion of Bitcoin addresses could be vulnerable in a future quantum era—though exact timelines for practical quantum attacks remain uncertain.
Google outlined a plan to keep HTTPS secure in a post-quantum era by using Merkle Tree Certificates (MTCs) that compress quantum-resistant data into compact proofs. A certificate authority would sign a single Tree Head for potentially millions of certs, with browsers receiving a lightweight inclusion proof instead of bulky post-quantum material (roughly 2.5 KB today vs. 64 bytes). Public transparency logs help prevent rogue certs, and Chrome has already started implementing MTCs, with Cloudflare piloting about 1,000 TLS certs while CAs prepare to adopt the system. An IETF working group on PKI, Logs, and Tree Signatures is coordinating standards to standardize this long-term, aiming to accelerate post-quantum resilience without slowing handshake times.
Bitcoin developers merged BIP-360 into the GitHub repository to establish a post-quantum framework, introducing Pay-to-Merkle-Root to disable the quantum-exposed key-path spend and laying groundwork for future quantum-safe signatures; the change is not yet activated and would require broad consensus to deploy. Within the community, experts are divided on how soon a quantum threat could matter: some, like Caltech’s president, project fault-tolerant quantum systems in 5–7 years, while others including NIST guidance and researchers like CoinShares and Jameson Lopp say practical quantum risks are still years or even decades away, underscoring ongoing debates about timing and the challenges of upgrading a ossified decentralized network.
Google warns that quantum computers could soon break current public-key cryptography and urges governments and industry to accelerate adoption of post-quantum cryptography, aligned with NIST’s PQC standards finalized in 2024. The company says it has been preparing since 2016, implementing crypto agility across its infrastructure, and outlines five policy steps: drive society-wide momentum across critical infrastructure; ensure PQC is embedded in AI systems; avoid fragmentation of standards; promote cloud-first modernization to ease migrations; and maintain ongoing engagement with technical experts to prevent strategic surprises.
Investors are treating quantum-security risks as real and supporting hardware-enabled research; HOLO shows classical hardware speeding up quantum simulations, Jefferies drops BTC due to quantum risk, LAES expands quantum-safe chips, and SEEQC and other quantum firms push toward public markets as the industry shifts from lab to scale.
The BIS paper emphasizes the urgent need for the financial system to prepare for quantum computing's potential to break current encryption, advocating for early adoption of quantum-safe cryptographic measures, coordinated planning, and exploring long-term solutions like quantum key distribution to ensure security and resilience.
Apple's upcoming iOS 17.4 update will introduce a new state-of-the-art security upgrade for iMessage, featuring post-quantum cryptography Level 3 (PQ3) to enhance security properties. This protocol will safeguard against sophisticated attacks and protect against known and unknown future threats, including high-level zero-click government attacks. The new security system will be deployed with the public releases of iOS 17.4, iPadOS 17.4, macOS 14.4, and watchOS 10.4, and is already available in developer and public beta releases.
Apple has introduced a new post-quantum cryptographic protocol called PQ3 to enhance the security of iMessage against potential quantum computing threats, aiming to achieve Level 3 security. The protocol combines Kyber and ECC, and is designed to protect against highly sophisticated quantum attacks and mitigate the impact of key compromises. Support for PQ3 will roll out with the next iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS updates, while Apple also plans to bring Rich Communication Services (RCS) to its Messages app with improved security and encryption.
Apple has announced a new post-quantum cryptographic protocol for iMessage called PQ3, which provides extensive defenses against quantum attacks and surpasses the security of other widely deployed messaging apps. The PQ3 protocol will roll out for supported iMessage conversations starting with certain software updates in March and will fully replace iMessage's existing cryptography protocol later this year. The new protocol is designed to protect users against potential future quantum attacks and will require all devices in an iMessage conversation to be updated to specific software versions or later to be eligible.
Google has announced the release of the first implementation of quantum-resistant encryption for FIDO2 security keys, which provide secure logins to websites without passwords. The implementation combines the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) with a post-quantum algorithm called Dilithium. This hybrid approach aims to protect against future quantum attacks while also relying on the battle-tested ECDSA algorithm. The implementation is small enough to run on security keys' constrained hardware and offers improved signature speed. Google hopes to see this implementation standardized and supported by major web browsers to protect users' credentials against quantum attacks.