(QuintessenceLabs) Andreas Baumhof asks and answers: What do we need to upgrade to become quantum-safe?” in his latest blog. The posting is lengthy,but Baumhof answers the central question:
Well, it looks like that we literally need to upgrade everything. We basically use cryptography everywhere and we encrypt everything, so there are lots of things we need to look at. A few examples:
–Every IoT device communicates with its parents via a HTTPS connection, which involves cryptography.
–Every piece of data at rest that is encrypted can be harvested today and decrypted once the capabilities are there (applies to databases, bitcoins, cryptocurrencies at large, data dumps, financial records, stolen information, …)
–This area is massive as every single website that collects anything from you has to store it somewhere. Most likely in an encrypted fashion to comply with privacy regulations such as GDPR or California private act, …
–Every internet connection uses cryptography, whether it is a browser-server session (e.g. https), server-to-server –protocols (like noise), or VPN tunnels (like IPSEC, OpenVPN)Every application communicates to the cloud via TLS (uploads your iCloud photos, or Dropbox, Google, Azure
And these are just some examples, the list is much, much longer.
NOTE: The blog is worth a read in entirety. Baumhof goes on to talk about “Let’s Fix It!”
What Do We Need to Upgrade to Become Quantum Safe?
