On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 8:38 AM, Gregory Foster <gfoster@entersection.org> wrote:

Aerospace & Defense News (Dec 19) - "Army Researchers Seek Secure Quantum Communications": http://www.asdnews.com/news-46753/Army_Researchers_Seek_Secure_Quantum_Commu...

...

"Quantum computers will be able to easily decrypt communications that are currently secure," Meyers said. "We're talking decryption in seconds instead of years. That's one reason why it's vital for us to explore quantum encryption."

I am yet to see evidence that quantum computing is viable for any non-trivial number of qubits. I think it is more likely that we will see the idealized notion of quantum superposition break once QC is pushed far enough, resulting in physics, but not computation breakthrough, and in ability to still use finite fields-based cryptography, just with bigger key lengths. Also, as pointed by Matt Mackall above, there is a frequent misconception that quantum computers are anything like non-deterministic Turing machines b they are not, and shuffling-based (i.e., symmetric-key, classical) cryptography is still resistant to QC, assuming it's actually resistant to classic computing as well (which is generally seen as a much stronger assumption than, e.g., assuming that factoring is hard). Caveat emptor: not my field, inb4 hate from QC people. -- Maxim Kammerer LibertC) Linux: http://dee.su/liberte -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE