Quantum Computing and the Impending Vulnerability of RSA and ECC Encryption

Asymmetric cryptographic protocols include algorithms such as RSA and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) form the basis of secure communications we currently make use of and these systems are based on mathematical problems, integer factorization and discrete logarithm, considered to be computation- ally difficult for the classical computational models. Quantum computing, which is based on quantum phenomena (i.e. super-position, quantumentanglement) is a major existential threat to these cryptographic pillars. Quantum processors - The computational power of quantum processors has shown that the integer factorizations as well as discrete logarithms problems cannot be hard. Shor’s algorithm shows that quantum processors can easily solve integer factorization as well as the discrete logarithm problem, thus attacking the Ivory Tower directly from nutritionally providing the security of RSA and ECC [2]. As a result, once the first quantum hardware appears and goes into production, the existing RSA and ECC secure primitives that were considered to be safe for quite some time will be rendered useless. Even a few months after being deployed,” harvest-now-decrypt-later” methods in which ciphertext is collected now but decrypted later, when quantum computers become practical, will significantly degrade the security guarantees of classical cryptographic protocols. This imminent vulnerability has led to active research in PQC schemes that would be able to resist quantum attacks. PQC standards are on the rise and bring many benefits, but the switch is technically and operationally very demanding on organizations as it requires extensive changes to current data infrastructures, careful evaluation of algorithmic strength and deployment efforts.