From Pre-Quantum to Post-Quantum RSA
Sandeep Joshi, Amit Kumar Bairwa, Anton Pavlovich Pljonkin, Pradumn Garg, Kshitij Agrawal · 2023
Quantum computing, however young, challenges the most popular public-key encryption techniques. Due to their ability to solve the key distribution problem and provide high security in insecure communications channels that allow website access, email exchange, financial transactions, digitally signed documents, military communications, and medical data, such systems are vital to Internet security today. RSA, ECC, and Diffie Hellman are increasingly used globally. Internet protocols like Transport Layer Security (TLS) used by ordinary PCs and IoT devices increasingly include these systems. Because many IoT devices are battery-powered and have limited processing power and memory, they need energy-efficient and lightweight algorithms to provide effective security. These constraints become critical when developing cryptosystems that require extensive mathematical operations and significant computing resources, often needed in defence, mission-critical, or intelligent healthcare applications where data privacy must be maintained over time. Scientists are striving to protect IoT devices against quantum computing. This study will demonstrate how quantum computing can break RSA in polynomial time, something conventional computers cannot do due to processing power constraints. It will show how quantum computing could effect blockchain and wallet signatures, which employ the RSA cryptosystem for key encryption. Quantum computers with more qubits will crack factorization cyphers faster.