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Google Is Working To Safeguard Chrome From Quantum Computers (theverge.com)
Quantum computing could potentially someday be used to retroactively break any communications that were encrypted with today's standard encryption algorithms. Google realizes this, and hence, is ensuring that it doesn't happen. Today, it announced that it has begun to deploy a new type of cryptography called the New Hope algorithm in its Chrome Canary browser that is designed to prevent such decryption attacks. From a report on The Verge: Although quantum computers of this variety are only small and experimental at this stage, Google is taking precautions for the worst case scenario. "While they will, no doubt, be of huge benefit in some areas of study, some of the problems that they [quantum computers] are effective at solving are the ones that we use to secure digital communications," writes Matt Braithwaite, a Google software engineer, in a blog post. "Specifically, if large quantum computers can be built then they may be able to break the asymmetric cryptographic primitives that are currently used in TLS, the security protocol behind HTTPS." In other words, quantum computers could undermine the security of the entire internet. Quantum computers promise computational power far exceeding today's standards by taking advantage of the underpinning physics discipline. So the presence of a hypothetical future quantum computer, Braithwaite adds, puts at risk any and all encrypted internet communication past or present. It's unclear how secure New Hope (PDF) will prove to be for Chrome, and Braithwaite admits it could be less secure than its existing encryption. But Google says New Hope -- developed by researchers Erdem Alkim, Leo Ducas, Thomas Poppelmann and Peter Schwabe -- was the most promising of all post-quantum key-exchange software it looked into last year.
I wouldn't buy Quantum Bigfoot hard drives back in the day. I'm sure as hell not buying a Quantum computer any time soon.
"security of the entire internet."
The author of this nugget doesn't know, apparently, that the Internet was never designed to be secure, and any attempt to make it so will inevitably fail. The Internet was designed to facilitate the OPEN exchange of information.
I don't respond to AC's.
Post-Quantum cryptography, but still can't give us an option to disable middle click scrolling on Windows.
>So the presence of a hypothetical future quantum computer, Braithwaite adds, puts at risk any and all encrypted internet communication past or present. It's unclear how secure New Hope (PDF) will prove to be for Chrome, and Braithwaite admits it could be less secure than its existing encryption.
Braithwait is really pushing their wristwatches hard. That is some serious marketing.
somehow, I don't fully trust google to safeguard ANY privacy.
I know they have the financial ability to do major work like this, but their results are 100% untrustable, given WHO they are and WHAT they do.
damn. we could use a good ally on the freedom trail; but google will NEVER be it.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
[...] a new type of cryptography called the New Hope algorithm [...]
Maybe it's just me, but I have some reservations using an encryption technology with the word "Hope" in the name--as in, "We really hope this works." It's kind of like PGP, "Pretty Good Privacy." It's not great, but it's pretty good.
Granted, what's in a name? Take the same encryption and call it "Anti-Quantum Encryption" and I'd probably be on board.
never mind quantum computers, shouldn't almighty goog starts working on protecting itself, and its zombies, against omniscient God too?
after all unencrypted communications from goog will indicate its pledge to 'do no evil' was a fat evil lie? especially communications between bloody scum like jared cohen, eric schmidt, ilk, with hillary/kerry run state department. plotting murderous regime change in syria by helping 'rebels'(ie in reality al nusra and isis).
Why do you feel the need to keep repeating this? Do you think doing so will suddenly make it true?
Ever hear of cryptography? Ever hear of IPSec, for example, not to mention the numerous protocols- TLS, PGP, SSH, the Signal protocol, etc. etc. etc.? What about the underlying nature of "the Internet" are you saying makes security layers on top of it "inevitably fail?"
I'm not a security expert, but being able to retroactively break everything encrypted using quantum computing is why I think peer-to-peer file storage of personal documents is a non-starter. Sure it's secure today, but someday all your bits will be visible to the world.
Break TLS? Isn't it already broken?
It's not really fair to call what a quantum computer does "computational power", is it? If you factor N by trying all the integers greater than one and smaller than M= floor( square root ( N ) ), you will eventually find the answer, and the more computational power you have, the faster you can race from 2 to M. Using Shor's algorithm on a quantum machine, you don't actually end up doing all of the intervening computation, but you do get the answer. But that doesn't mean you can automatically take any set of problems and "solve them all at once", because that isn't really what is happening. It's not computational power in that sense, right?
The core problem with pushing "post quantum" crypto into production is you are essentially making choices in the blind based exclusively on fear and *baseless* speculation. There is no affirmative evidence of any kind Quantum computers with the capability to crack crypto are even possible let alone expected in the near to medium term.
I can't help but wonder if at least some of those pushing "post quantum" crypto are intentionally making a play to nerf security more than it already is.
There are a million practical things Google could elect to do to improve real world practical security starting with not reading everyone's email to applying TLS-SRP patches to enable secure password authentication to making Android less of a security joke. Time spent on post quantum crap is time not spent addressing actual threats we know for sure exist in the real world.
Why not just call it the JesusAlgo? Someone send the geniuses over at GoogleSec the definition of connotation.
New Hope is interesting, because it's a DH-like key exchange algorithm that supposedly withstands quantum computers. If that holds true, then even if the RSA or EC keys used in the certificates are broken in the future, because DH-like algorithms provide forward security, you won't be able to decipher communication that you saved today at a later date. For this reason it's fantastic to see that they implement this now.
The only thing that the article doesn't really go into detail on is whether they combine that with traditional DH or ECDHE? If you read the New Hope paper, the authors themselves recommend (because they can't even guarantee that there's no classical attack on their shiny new algorithm) to perform a traditional key exchange in parallel and then derive the session key from a KDF (key derivation function) applied to the output of both New Hope and the traditional algorithm. This would ensure that even if one of these algorithms were to be completely broken in the future, as long as the other one holds forward secrecy would remain intact. For this reason it'd be great to know a bit more details in how they actually implemented this: do they do this combination? Or do they just implement New Hope?
I already have Robot Insurance from the Old Glory Insurance Company. Would my policy cover attacks from Quantum Computers? That would be a type of robot, wouldn't it?
Meanwhile, remembered passwords are still stored in plain text by default.
Is this sarcastic news?
Perhaps somethings which takes a description of a known schematic of gates and can find a set of values for the nodes interconnecting the gates which is consistent with the schematic and operation of the gates. (For example, a schematic for a multiplier with constraints to make the output 15, input A input B, and input A != 1.)
A useful quantum computer would be one which can do this when the number of unknown nodes and topology is such that no classic computer can figure this out, but the quantum can because it considers all the possible value combinations at once. (One that can solve the above is interesting, but not useful because you can get the answer by exhaustive search on a cheap computer.)
If this is the model, then what are they doing to the algorithm to make it hopefully safe?
If this is not the model, then what model are they using?
According to Google's blog post:
Today we're announcing an experiment in Chrome where a small fraction of connections between desktop Chrome and Google's servers will use a post-quantum key-exchange algorithm in addition to the elliptic-curve key-exchange algorithm that would typically be used. By adding a post-quantum algorithm on top of the existing one, we are able to experiment without affecting user security. The post-quantum algorithm might turn out to be breakable even with today's computers, in which case the elliptic-curve algorithm will still provide the best security that today’s technology can offer. Alternatively, if the post-quantum algorithm turns out to be secure then it'll protect the connection even against a future, quantum computer.
If I read this correctly, they are using "New Hope" in combination with an existing algorithm.
Of course not based on silly electronic qubits though.
Optical quantum computers on the other hand, pretty sure the NSA has them.