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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ some quick thoughts on encryption...

Posted by: hobgoblin Sep 13 2007, 08:16 PM

http://www.huliq.com/34160/qubits-poised-to-reveal-our-secrets

while i dont see quantum computers being hand-held, even in SR, i suspect that perhaps one can pipe whatever one wants to decrypt to some that are rentable online.

also, what if the current breed of encryption in SR is commersial. as in, its whats sold as private protection?

it will not slow down a dedicated hacker, hell, it may not even slow down the neighbors kids. but for the clueless or semi-clueless consumer its gold.

Posted by: SonofaSailor Sep 13 2007, 09:38 PM

Yea I saw that earlier today. It's interesting to say the least. If history bears out, some genious will figure out a new algorith that beats the Quantum computers.

Posted by: kzt Sep 13 2007, 10:46 PM

Quantum computers don't effectively compromise symmetric encryption, like AES.

They do, if you can get one that works and has a large enough (like thousnds of qbits) capacity, vastly cut the keyspace down. So AES-256 becomes AES-128. However AES-128 is still effectively immune to brute force attacks unless you are working on a geological timescale.

They mostly screw up public key encryption. RSA and Elliptical Curves, for example. But I've read (in articles by people smarter than me) that there are public key approaches that are not susceptible to attack by quantum computers. They just are not widely used.

And I believe (though I may well be wrong) that the Shannon's Information Theory says that you still have the entropy cost of doing the decryption using quantum computers. Which results in a huge amount of power being used and heat released for attacking complex codes.

Posted by: Cweord Sep 14 2007, 01:51 PM

I don' t know which concerns me more, my brain leaking out of my ears after reading all of that, or the fact that I understood most of it.

Posted by: The Jopp Sep 14 2007, 02:47 PM

My main gripe withSR encryption is the following:

Shadowrun encryption isn't.

Posted by: Cweord Sep 14 2007, 03:07 PM

Just a note Page 102 of Augmentation mentions 'entanglement driven Information Technology' using quantum states . . . .