Quantum tech is coming — and with it a risk of cyber doomsday
However, it also presents a big problem for cybersecurity.
Modern-day digital communications, internet traffic and data collections are secured using a system called public key cryptography, which relies on complex mathematics that regular computers can’t solve. But quantum computers — which are many times more powerful than today’s computers — could crack those codes easily, experts have warned.
“Everything breaks,” said Nigel Smart, a professor with the computer security and industrial cryptography department at KU Leuven, a Belgian university. “Your phone, the internet, everything breaks. Not break as in doesn’t work, breaks as in, it’s not secure.”
Once quantum computers reach the inflection point, it would effectively mean that most of today’s data zooming around on internet wires would be readable to anyone tapping in.
A particularly eerie problem is what’s known as “store now, decrypt later,” where threat actors — notably intelligence agencies — take data that’s encrypted with public key cryptography, retain it and then unlock it once quantum computing technology is sufficiently advanced.
The challenge for European countries will be to defend themselves against these emerging threats — or else fall prey to foreign spooks, cyber crooks and hackers.
The European Union warned in its quantum strategy on Wednesday that the bloc is at risk of seeing promising homegrown quantum tech firms falling into the hands of foreign players.
Europe is the global leader in the number of scientific publications on the technology, but private investment has mostly gone elsewhere: Europe attracts only 5 percent of global private quantum funding, compared to over 50 percent by the U.S. and 40 percent by China, according to the EU's calculations.
2030 deadline
In parallel with the Commission’s grand plan to speed up on quantum, European authorities have been developing guidelines to mitigate the risks of encryption being broken.