Chinese scientists hack military grade encryption on quantum computer: paper

Chinese scientists have mounted what they say is the world’s first effective attack on a widely used encryption method using a quantum computer.

The breakthrough poses a “real and substantial threat” to the long-standing password-protection mechanism employed across critical sectors, including banking and the military, according to the researchers.

Despite the slow progress in general-purpose quantum computing, which currently poses no threat to modern cryptography, scientists have been exploring various attack approaches on specialised quantum computers.

In the latest work led by Wang Chao, of Shanghai University, the team said it used a quantum computer produced by Canada’s D-Wave Systems to successfully breach cryptographic algorithms.

Using the D-Wave Advantage, they successfully attacked the Present, Gift-64 and Rectangle algorithms – all representative of the SPN (Substitution-Permutation Network) structure, which forms part of the foundation for advanced encryption standard (AES) widely used in the military and finance.

AES-256, for instance, is considered the best encryption available and often referred to as military-grade encryption.