NSA seeks to build quantum computer that could crack most types of encryption

The Washington Post ^ | January 2, 2014 | Steve Rich

[Biggirl]

In room-size metal boxes, secure against electromagnetic leaks, the National Security Agency is racing to build a computer that could break nearly every kind of encryption used to protect banking, medical, business and government records around the world.

According to documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the effort to build “a cryptologically useful quantum computer” — a machine exponentially faster than classical computers — is part of a $79.7 million research program titled, “Penetrating Hard Targets.” Much of the work is hosted under classified contracts at a laboratory in College Park.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

What this needs is the agreement of several hundred very high volume data users to create massive random data flows to overflow even a massively parallel system.

That is, in effect, the NSA is hoping to develop a very fast brute force system. But if it tries to decrypt garbage, it must go all the way to the nth calculation to show that it is garbage, and even then it is never sure that it is garbage.

Eventually, maximum effort to produce minimal results will render it cost ineffective.

They are experiencing a similar problem right now by trying to monitor all communications all the time everywhere. So much garbage that anything of value in it is lost.

[Deek]

The irony of building a quantum computer for decryption/factoring is that the complexity with building the computer is entangling the bits, keeping the bits entangled, then "reading" the bits.

Once that problem is figured out, the technology can be fairly readily adapted to build quantum encryption that can't be broken by a quantum computer.

So once the problem is solved, the solution creates a new greater problem.

[PATRIOT1876]

When do we get to see the guy from the old Apple commercial on the large screen?

I’ll bring the sledgehammer....

[bgill]

seeks to build = already built 5 years ago and the $$$$$$$$ is a laundering scheme.

[JoeFromSidney]

One-time cipher pads are still pretty safe so long as you just use them once.

The problem is getting genuinely random numbers for the key. Computers produce only pseudorandom numbers, and even if the keys are genuinely random, keeping the "code book" secure is difficult.

[JoeFromSidney]

I've looked into using tables of economic and demographic data, and telephone directories, as sources of random numbers. They "sort of" solve the problem of distributing the keys. The numbers pass several tests of randomness, but if "they" figure out which table you're using, the game is up.