The Need of Post-Quantum Cryptography
#Quantum30 Cohort 03: Day 20
Date: 20th October, 2023.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, also known as the NIST, is a United States government laboratory that works to develop, test, and recommend best practices for federal agencies, and other organizations relating to things such as online security.
NIST is a world leader in many areas of measurement science and technology. Its work has a major impact on the economy and the quality of life in the United States.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is playing a leading role in the post-quantum cryptography (PQC) competition.
NIST is responsible for organizing and managing the competition, as well as for evaluating the submitted algorithms. NIST is also working to develop standards for PQC algorithms and to promote their adoption.
NIST worked with the cryptography community to develop a set of requirements for the PQC competition. These requirements include performance, security, and implementation considerations.
NIST solicited submissions from the cryptography community for new PQC algorithms. NIST is currently evaluating the submissions to select the most promising candidates for standardization.
NIST is hosting workshops and conferences to discuss PQC and algorithms. It has completed the third round of the Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) standardization process, which selects public-key cryptographic algorithms to protect information through the advent of quantum computers.
A total of four candidate algorithms have been selected for standardization, and four additional algorithms will continue into the fourth round.
Cryptography algorithms are used to protect data from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction.
A cryptographic algorithm is a mathematical procedure that is used to transform data into an unreadable format. This process is called encryption.
The prime goal of encryption is “easy to DO, hard to UNDO!”
As Quantum Computers are good at prime factorization, using Shor’s Algorithm, it can break Cryptographic encryptions such as, RSA and Diffie-Hellman.
However currently, we don’t have enough number of qubits to build a quantum computer, so strong, that can use the Shor’s Algorithm and break the current systems of encryptions.
So we are safe..!
Well not really!!…
Our data, with the current systems of encryption, can be stored for the future where we’ll have the enough number of qubits to apply Shor’s Algorithm and break the RSA encryption and decrypt the data.!
So, we still lack future security!
Also, Quantum Cryptography is not at all a synonym of Post-Quantum Cryptography!
Quantum Cryptography is doing cryptography on a quantum computer, which is totally different from PQC.
As PQC, is securing against quantum attacks on a Classical Computer.
Until now, there are Six families of Crypto Algorithms have been considered to be quantum proof!
They are:
- Lattice based cryptography
- Code based cryptography
- Hash- based cryptography
- Non-commutative cryptography
- Multiverse
- Isogeny based cryptography
These algorithms provide a secure encryption for our data with today’s and futuristic attacks of decryption!
Thanks for reading!
#Quantum30 #PostQuantumCryptography #QuantumCrptography #QuantumComputing #QuantumAlgorithms #QuantumComputingIndia
I would like to thank QuantumComputingIndia, for availing this precious opportunity to dive deeper into the quantum ocean!
