According to reports circulating on the web, 24 Chinese researchers have reportedly succeeded in breaking RSA encryption using a quantum computer. This would be a significant achievement, as RSA encryption is widely used in current security practices. However, a number of experts, computer scientists, and cryptographers do not believe the researchers have made a significant discovery, based on the scientific paper published in Dec. 2022.
Quantum Computing Race Heats Up as Chinese Researchers Claim Breakthrough in RSA Encryption
In Sept. 2022, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned that a post-quantum world was coming soon and stressed that contemporary encryption techniques could break. Months later, in December 2022, a scientific paper published by 24 Chinese researchers claimed to have broken 2048-bit RSA encryption using a quantum computer. The paper follows a report from April 2022 that detailed that China was “taking the lead” in the quantum computing race.
Basically, a quantum computer is a type of computational device that uses quantum-mechanical phenomena and can perform operations on data faster than classical computers can perform computational tasks. RSA is named after its creators, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman, and is widely used on today’s computer systems. It is an example of a public-key cryptography system, which means that modern computers often use it to encrypt and decrypt messages.
On January 5, 2023, the Financial Times (FT) reported on the paper that alleges Chinese researchers have claimed success in breaking RSA encryption. FT questioned a few experts about the paper, and Roger Grimes, a computer security expert and author, told FT: “It’s a huge claim — It would mean that governments could crack other governments’ secrets. If it’s true — a big if — it would be a secret like out of the movies, and one of the biggest things ever in computer science.”
There is also a Google Groups conversation where people are debating whether Chinese researchers have factored in 2048-bit integers. Bruce Schneier, a computer security and cryptography expert, published an analysis and stated that the paper relies on a disputed paper written by Peter Schnorr, a German mathematician. Schneier also shared his opinion with the Financial Times about the so-called quantum computing breakthrough. “We have no empirical proof that the [new] quantum algorithm overcomes the Schnorr…
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