this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
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Privacy
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Quantum computers eh? Yeah that's not even remotely true. Currently they are a scientific curiosity with very very little practical use.
It does not even matter, namely if tomorrow quantum computers were to become a commodity then we would at the same time switch to quantum resistant encryption, e.g https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/post-quantum-cryptography
The name "post quantum encryption" sounds super complicated, and to be fair the math behind it is beyond my understanding (and I won't even claim I would have enough time in my life time to study it and assume I can formally prove all of it to be correct) yet switching is actually relatively trivial, namely your software, say a browser like Firefox or Chrome, and the server it communicates with, e.g lemmy.ml relying on e.g nginx or Apache, "just" have to have at least 1 matching encryption scheme, one way to exchange data that is post-quantum resistant. In practice that means configuration files on both sides that you, as a user, do not even know exist and that can be done through basic updates.
TL;DR: most users will switch to post-quantum encryption without even realizing, and then even if say the NSA were to buy a $1T quantum computer, even your $1K computer and the $10K server it communicates with would be able to handle it no problem, even a $30 Raspberry Pi computer will.
Yes, this is what they say. Maybe true, but how long? Do you think that surveillance companies like Google, once this technology is implemented, and financed by secret services and the military, will use it exclusively for the good of humanity? We will see
https://blog.google/technology/research/google-gesda-and-xprize-launch-new-competition-in-quantum-applications/