1. The mechanics of cryptographic attack and defense are more complicated that you might imagine. This is because (a) there is a huge difference between the attack capabilities of nations versus those of other maligne actors. Even if the NSA, with its highly-skilled staff and big budget, is able to crack your everyday TLS traffic, doesn’t mean that your bank transactions aren’t safe against petty internet criminals. And (b) state secrets typically need to be safe against computers of 20+ years in the future, as you don’t want enemy states to capture your traffic now and decrypt it as soon as slightly better hardware is available.
2. NIST is running a project at this moment to standardize a post-quantum cryptographical protocol. Cryptographers from many countries in the world are collaborating on this. The tentative timeline lists the completion of the draft standards in 2022-2024.
Hence, experts worldwide estimate that strong quantum computers will not be deployed even by intelligence agencies until well into the 2030s (e: 40′s). Consumer targets will stay safe for even longer than that.
1. The mechanics of cryptographic attack and defense are more complicated that you might imagine. This is because (a) there is a huge difference between the attack capabilities of nations versus those of other maligne actors. Even if the NSA, with its highly-skilled staff and big budget, is able to crack your everyday TLS traffic, doesn’t mean that your bank transactions aren’t safe against petty internet criminals. And (b) state secrets typically need to be safe against computers of 20+ years in the future, as you don’t want enemy states to capture your traffic now and decrypt it as soon as slightly better hardware is available.
2. NIST is running a project at this moment to standardize a post-quantum cryptographical protocol. Cryptographers from many countries in the world are collaborating on this. The tentative timeline lists the completion of the draft standards in 2022-2024.
Hence, experts worldwide estimate that strong quantum computers will not be deployed even by intelligence agencies until well into the 2030s (e: 40′s). Consumer targets will stay safe for even longer than that.