The quantum meltdown of encryption

@ShlomiDolev is the Chair Professor and founder of the Computer Science department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is the author of Self-Stabilization. Shlomi also is a cybersecurity entrepreneur and the co-founder and chief scientist of Secret Double Octopus. The quantum computing apocalypse is imminent The world stands at the cusp of one of the greatest breakthroughs in information technology. Huge leaps forward in all fields of computer science, from data analysis to machine learning, will result from this breakthrough. But like all of man’s technological achievements, from the combustion engine to nuclear power, harnessing quantum comes with potential dangers as well. #Quantumcomputers have created a slew of unforeseen vulnerabilities in the very infrastructure that keeps the digital sphere safe. The underlying assumption behind nearly all encryption ciphers used today is that their complexity precludes any attempt by hackers to break them, as it would take years for even our most advanced conventional computers to do so. But quantum computing will change all of that. Quantum computers promise to bring computational power leaps and bounds ahead of our most advanced machines. Recently, scientists at @Google began testing their cutting edge 72 #qubit quantum computer. The researchers expect to demonstrate with this machine quantum supremacy, or the ability to perform a calculation impossible with traditional computers. Chink in the Armor Today’s standard encryption techniques are based on what’s called Public Key Infrastructure or PKI, a set of protocols brought to the world of information technology in the 1970’s. PKI works by generating a complex cipher through random numbers that only the intended recipient of a given message, the one in possession of the private key, can decode. As a system of encoding data, PKI was sound and reliable. But in order to implement it as a method to be used in the real world, there was still one question that needed to be answered: how could individuals confirm the identity of a party reaching out and making a request to communicate? This vulnerability left the door open for cybercriminals to impersonate legitimate servers, or worse, insert themselves into a conversation between users and intercept communications between them, in what’s known as a Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attack. The industry produced a solution to this authentication problem in the form of digital certificates, electronic documents the contents of which can prove senders are actually who they claim to be. The submission of certificates at the initiation of a session allows the parties to know who it is they are about to communicate with. Today, trusted third party companies called Certificate Authorities, or CAs, create and provide these documents that are relied upon by everyone from private users to the biggest names in tech. The problem is that certificates themselves rely on public-key cryptographic functions for their reliability, which, in the not too distant future, will be vulnerable to attack by quantum machines. Altered certificates could then be used by cyber criminals to fake their identities, completely undermining certificates as a method of authentication. Intel’s 17-qubit superconducting test chip for quantum computing has unique features for improved connectivity and better electrical and thermo-mechanical performance. (Credit: Intel Corporation)   Decentralizing the Threat This isn’t the first time we’ve had to get creative when it comes to encryption. When Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, whose true identity is still unknown, revealed his revolutionary idea in a 2008 white paper, he also introduced the beginnings of a unique peer-to-peer authentication system that today we call blockchain. The brilliantly innovative blockchain system at its core is an open ledger that records transactions between two parties in a permanent way without needing third-party authentication. Blockchain provided the global record-keeping network that has kept Nakamoto’s digital currency safe from fraudsters. Blockchain is based on the concept of decentralization, spreading the authentication process across a large body of users. No single piece of data can be altered without the alteration of all other blocks, which would require the collusion of the majority of the entire network. For years, blockchain and Bitcoin remained one and the same. About five years ago, innovators in the industry began to realize that blockchain could be used for more than just securing cryptocurrency. Altering the original system designed for Bitcoin could produce programs to be applied in a wide range of industries, from healthcare, to insurance, to political elections. Gradually, new decentralized systems began to emerge such as those of Ripple and Litecoin. In 2015, one of the original contributors to the Bitcoin codebase Vitalik Buterin released his Ethereum project also based on blockchain. What these new platforms added to the picture was the ability to record new types of data in addition to currency exchanges, such as loans and contractual agreements. The advantages of the blockchain concept quickly became apparent. By 2017, nearly fifteen percent of all financial institutions in the world were using blockchain to secure aspects of their operations. The number of industries incorporating decentralized systems continues to grow. Saving PKI The best solution for protecting encryption from our ever-growing processing power is integrating decentralization into Public Key Infrastructure. What this means essentially, is that instead of keeping digital certificates in one centralized location, which makes them vulnerable to being hacked and tampered with, they would be spread out in a world-wide ledger, one fundamentally impervious to alteration. A hacker attempting to modify certificates would be unable to pull off such a fraud, as it would mean changing data stored on enumerable diversified blocks spread out across the cyber sphere. Decentralization has already been proven as a highly effective way of protecting recorded data from tampering. Similarly, using a blockchain-type system to replace the single entity Certificate Authority, can keep our digital certificates much safer. It is in fact one of the only foreseeable solutions to keep the quantum revolution from undermining the foundation of PKI.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/22/the-quantum-meltdown-of-encryption/

Making an Unconventional Computer Using Conventional Technology

In their quest to build a #quantumcomputer, researchers from #RIKEN are turning to well-established, silicon-based manufacturing techniques currently used in the electronics industry. Quantum bits, or ‘ #qubits ’, are used to store #quantuminformation and are the fundamental building blocks of quantum computers. Unlike conventional bits that classical computers use, qubits can simultaneously be both one and zero. Making a fully functional quantum computer will require connecting huge numbers of qubits—of the order of a 100 million or more. Current manufacturing techniques employed to fabricate the silicon metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors ( #MOSFETs ) that lie at the heart of modern computers could also be used to integrate qubits with current electronics, offering the potential for scaling up quantum devices and bringing quantum computing closer to becoming a reality. Keiji Ono and colleagues from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science and the Toshiba Corporation in Japan, in collaboration with researchers from the United States, are investigating the properties of qubits produced by imperfections or defects in silicon MOSFETs. In particular, they are exploring their potential for developing quantum computing devices that are compatible with current manufacturing technologies. “Companies like IBM and Google are developing quantum computers that use superconductors,” explains Ono. “In contrast, we are attempting to develop a quantum computer based on the silicon manufacturing techniques currently used to make computers and smart phones. The advantage of this approach is that it can leverage existing industrial knowledge and technology.” After cooling a silicon MOSFET to 1.6 kelvin (-271.6 degrees Celsius), the researchers measured its electrical properties while applying a magnetic field and a microwave field. They found that when the silicon MOSFET was neither fully turned on nor off, a pair of defects in the silicon MOSFET formed two quantum dots in close vicinity to each other. This ‘double quantum dot’ generated qubits from the spin of electrons in the dots. It also produced quantum effects that can be used to control these qubits. These observations are an important step toward controlling the quantum state of qubits in silicon MOSFETs and could pave the way for coupling qubits and making quantum devices using existing manufacturing techniques. The researchers intend to raise the temperature at which the phenomena occur. “The work was carried out at temperatures an order of magnitude higher than previously reported,” says Ono. “So one important direction for our future research will be to achieve the same outcomes at even higher temperatures, of say 10 or 100 kelvin, or even at room temperature.”

http://ein.iconnect007.com/index.php/article/108118/making-an-unconventional-computer-using-conventional-technology/108121/?skin=ein

Google on track for quantum computer breakthrough by end of 2017

#Google is leading the pack when it comes to quantum computing. The company is testing a 20- #qubitprocessor – its most powerful quantum chip yet – and is on target to have a working 49-qubit chip by the end of this year. Qubits, or quantum bits, can be a mixture of 0 and 1 at the same time, making them potentially more powerful than classical bits. And if everything goes to plan, the 49-qubit chip will make Google the first to build a quantum computer capable of solving certain problems that are beyond the abilities of ordinary computers. Google set itself this ambitious goal, known as quantum supremacy, in a paper published last July. Alan Ho, an engineer in Google’s quantum AI lab, revealed the company’s progress at a quantum computing conference in Munich, Germany. His team is currently working with a 20-qubit system that has a “two-qubit fidelity” of 99.5 per cent – a measure of how error-prone the processor is, with a higher rating equating to fewer errors. For quantum supremacy, Google will need to build a 49-qubit system with a two-qubit fidelity of at least 99.7 per cent. Ho is confident his team will deliver this system by the end of this year. Until now, the company’s best public effort was a 9-qubit computer built in 2015. Moving fast “Things really have moved much quicker than I would have expected,” says Simon Devitt at the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science in Japan. Now that Google and other companies involved in quantum computing have mastered much of the fundamental science behind creating high-quality superconducting qubits, the big challenge facing these firms is scaling these systems and reducing their error rates. It is important not to get carried away with numbers of qubits, says Michele Reilly, CEO at Turing Inc, a quantum start-up. It’s impossible to really harness the power of these machines in a useful way without error correction, she says – a technique that mitigates the fickle nature of quantum mechanics. Ho says it will be 2027 before we have error-corrected quantum computers, so useful devices are still some way off. But if Google can be the first to demonstrate quantum supremacy, showing that qubits really can beat regular computers, it will be a major scientific breakthrough.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2138373-google-on-track-for-quantum-computer-breakthrough-by-end-of-2017/

Google 50 qubit universal quantum computer could become world’s fastest computer this year

#Google ’s latest chip has only six #qubits, but they are arranged in a two-by-three configuration that Martinis says shows the company’s technology still works when qubits are nestled side by side, as they will be in larger devices. The six-qubit chip is also a test of a manufacturing method in which the qubits and the conventional wiring that controls them are made on separate chips later “bump bonded” together. That approach, a major focus of Google’s team since it was established just over two years ago, is intended to eliminate the extra control lines needed in a larger chip, which can interfere with how qubits function. “That process is all working,” says Martinis. “Now we’re ready to kind of move fast.” Designs for devices with 30 to 50 qubits are already in progress, he says. He briefly flashed up images of the six-qubit chip at the recent IEEE TechIgnite conference in San Bruno, California, but his group has yet to formally disclose technical details. Pulling off its quantum supremacy experiment this year would underline the search company’s competitiveness, although quantum processors would need to be much larger than 50 qubits to be capable of useful work

http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/04/google-50-qubit-universal-quantum-computer-could-become-worlds-fastest-computer-this-year.html

What if Quantum Computers Used Hard Drives Made of DNA?

YOU’VE HEARD THE hype: The #quantumcomputer revolution is coming. Physicists say these devices will be fast enough to break every encryption method banks use today. Their #artificialintelligence will be so advanced that you could load in the periodic table and the laws of quantum mechanics, and they could design the most efficient solar cell to date. And they’ll be here soon: Writing in Nature earlier this month, #Google researchers said they anticipate the first commercial quantum computers in five years, and the company wants to build and test a 49-qubit—that’s “quantum bit”—quantum computer by the end of this year. Some experts say that a 50-qubit computer could outperform any conventional computer. But there’s a big problem: By its nature, you can’t save or duplicate information on a quantum computer. All that computing power is of little use if you can’t back up your work. You can convert quantum data and put it on a traditional storage device, but all that converted data takes up a lot of space. So physicists are hunting for reliable, super-compact hard drives made of new materials—including DNA. Quantum computers are so powerful exactly because of their data density. A classical computer reads, stores, and manipulates bits: 1’s and 0’s. A quantum computer uses qubits: tiny quantum objects that can be in two states—both 1 and 0—at the same time, as long as you’re not looking at it. And if you control a quantum particle in a superposition of two states, you can perform tasks in parallel, which speeds up certain computational tasks exponentially. That speed won’t improve your #Netflix experience or make #MicrosoftExcel more bearable, but it will be much faster at running search algorithms or simulating complicated systems like organic materials or the human brain.

https://www.wired.com/2017/03/quantum-computers-used-hard-drives-made-dna/

Quantum computing is poised to transform our lives. Meet the man leading Google's charge

 R&D #Quantumcomputing is poised to transform our lives. Meet the man leading #Google 's charge John Martinis outlines how he's building his qubit computer and what it will do John Martinis, University of Santa Barbara physics professor and head of Google's quantum computing lab, is less concerned with the well-being of Schrödinger's infamous cat than with how he can train it to solve complex maths problems. Last year, Martinis achieved the first step towards building a quantum computer with a working group of nine quantum bits (qubits) able to perform error-checking1. Now he's begun scaling this up, with the aim of demonstrating a 100-qubit group within the next couple of years. WIRED talked to him to him about the challenges involved. WIRED: Just how powerful does the kind of quantum computer you're building have the potential to be? John Martinis: Classical computation is based on the storage and manipulation of simple bits of information, which can be either a 0 or a 1. With quantum computing, we use the laws of quantum mechanics to build bits that are both 0 and 1 at the same time. This allows us to create a parallel processing machine where, instead of an algorithm running the case 0 and then running the case 1 and so on to get an answer, we can run 0 and 1 simultaneously. With a single bit that parallelisation speeds things up by a factor of two to the power of one - you've doubled the speed - but this power increases for every additional quantum bit you add, so the speed increase is exponential. So once you get to 300 qubits, you've sped things up by a factor of two to the power of 300, which is greater than the number of atoms in the entire universe. You can't achieve that with a classical computer. How do you build qubits and why did you choose that method?

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/googles-head-of-quantum-computing

D-Wave's 2,000-Qubit Quantum Annealing Computer Now 1,000x Faster Than Previous Generation

#D-Wave, a Canadian company developing the first commercial “ #quantumcomputer ,” announced its next-generation quantum annealing computer with 2,000 #qubits, which is twice as many as its previous generation had. History Of D-Wave D-Wave was created more than a decade ago, when it first developed a 16-qubit prototype. The company unveiled its 28-qubit version publicly for the first time in 2007. Since then, its increased its number of qubits at a steady pace, more than doubling every two years or so. In 2013, the company announced its 512-qubit computer and a collaboration between #Google and #NASA, who were going to test various algorithms on it and see how fast it could get compared to conventional computers. Last year, D-Wave announced a 1,000-qubit generation, and now the company is previewing its 2,000-qubit computer, which will likely go on sale next year.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/d-wave-2000-qubit-1000x-faster,32768.html

Revealed: Google’s plan for quantum computer supremacy

SOMEWHERE in California, #Google is building a device that will usher in a new era for computing. It’s a #quantumcomputer , the largest ever made, designed to prove once and for all that machines exploiting exotic physics can outperform the world’s top supercomputers. And New Scientist has learned it could be ready sooner than anyone expected – perhaps even by the end of next year. The quantum computing revolution has been a long time coming. In the 1980s, theorists realised that a computer based on quantum mechanics had the potential to vastly outperform ordinary, or classical, computers at certain tasks. But building one was another matter. Only recently has a quantum computer that can beat a classical one gone from a lab curiosity to something that could actually happen. Google wants to create the first. The firm’s plans are secretive, and Google declined to comment for this article. But researchers contacted by New Scientist all believe it is on the cusp of a breakthrough, following presentations at conferences

“They are definitely the world leaders now, there is no doubt about it,” says Simon Devittat the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science in Japan. “It’s Google’s to lose. If Google’s not the group that does it, then something has gone wrong.”

We have had a glimpse of Google’s intentions. Last month, its engineers quietly published a paper detailing their plans (arxiv.org/abs/1608.00263). Their goal, audaciously named quantum supremacy, is to build the first quantum computer capable of performing a task no classical computer can.

“It’s a blueprint for what they’re planning to do in the next couple of years,” says Scott Aaronson at the University of Texas at Austin, who has discussed the plans with the team.

So how will they do it? Quantum computers process data as quantum bits, or qubits. Unlike classical bits, these can store a mixture of both 0 and 1 at the same time, thanks to the principle of quantum superposition. It’s this potential that gives quantum computers the edge at certain problems, like factoring large numbers. But ordinary computers are also pretty good at such tasks. Showing quantum computers are better would require thousands of qubits, which is far beyond our current technical ability.

Instead, Google wants to claim the prize with just 50 qubits. That’s still an ambitious goal – publicly, they have only announced a 9-qubit computer – but one within reach.

To help it succeed, Google has brought the fight to quantum’s home turf. It is focusing on a problem that is fiendishly difficult for ordinary computers but that a quantum computer will do naturally: simulating the behaviour of a random arrangement of quantum circuits.

Any small variation in the input into those quantum circuits can produce a massively different output, so it’s difficult for the classical computer to cheat with approximations to simplify the problem. “They’re doing a quantum version of chaos,” says Devitt. “The output is essentially random, so you have to compute everything.”

To push classical computing to the limit, Google turned to Edison, one of the most advanced supercomputers in the world, housed at the US National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. Google had it simulate the behaviour of quantum circuits on increasingly larger grids of qubits, up to a 6 × 7 grid of 42 qubits.

This computation is difficult because as the grid size increases, the amount of memory needed to store everything balloons rapidly. A 6 × 4 grid needed just 268 megabytes, less than found in your average smartphone. The 6 × 7 grid demanded 70 terabytes, roughly 10,000 times that of a high-end PC.

Google stopped there because going to the next size up is currently impossible: a 48-qubit grid would require 2.252 petabytes of memory, almost double that of the top supercomputer in the world. If Google can solve the problem with a 50-qubit quantum computer, it will have beaten every other computer in existence.

Eyes on the prize

By setting out this clear test, Google hopes to avoid the problems that have plagued previous claims of quantum computers outperforming ordinary ones – including some made by Google.

Last year, the firm announced it had solved certain problems 100 million times faster than a classical computer by using a D-Wave quantum computer, a commercially available device with a controversial history. Experts immediately dismissed the results, saying they weren’t a fair comparison.

Google purchased its D-Wave computer in 2013 to figure out whether it could be used toimprove search results and artificial intelligence. The following year, the firm hiredJohn Martinis at the University of California, Santa Barbara, to design its own superconducting qubits. “His qubits are way higher quality,” says Aaronson.

It’s Martinis and colleagues who are now attempting to achieve quantum supremacy with 50 qubits, and many believe they will get there soon. “I think this is achievable within two or three years,” says Matthias Troyer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. “They’ve showed concrete steps on how they will do it.”

Martinis and colleagues have discussed a number of timelines for reaching this milestone, says Devitt. The earliest is by the end of this year, but that is unlikely. “I’m going to be optimistic and say maybe at the end of next year,” he says. “If they get it done even within the next five years, that will be a tremendous leap forward.”

The first successful quantum supremacy experiment won’t give us computers capable of solving any problem imaginable – based on current theory, those will need to be much larger machines. But having a working, small computer could drive innovation, or augment existing computers, making it the start of a new era.

Aaronson compares it to the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction, achieved by the Manhattan project in Chicago in 1942. “It might be a thing that causes people to say, if we want a full-scalable quantum computer, let’s talk numbers: how many billions of dollars?” he says.

Solving the challenges of building a 50-qubit device will prepare Google to construct something bigger. “It’s absolutely progress to building a fully scalable machine,” says Ian Walmsley at the University of Oxford.

For quantum computers to be truly useful in the long run, we will also need robust quantum error correction, a technique to mitigate the fragility of quantum states. Martinis and others are already working on this, but it will take longer than achieving quantum supremacy.

Still, achieving supremacy won’t be dismissed.

“Once a system hits quantum supremacy and is showing clear scale-up behaviour, it will be a flare in the sky to the private sector,” says Devitt. “It’s ready to move out of the labs.”

“The field is moving much faster than expected,” says Troyer. “It’s time to move quantum computing from science to engineering and really build devices.”

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23130894-000-revealed-googles-plan-for-quantum-computer-supremacy/

Could we soon all have quantum computers on our desks? Scientists claim to have cracked the problem of how they store data

The prospect of super-fast desktop quantum computers may be a step closer after scientists created a molecule that can function as a stable qubit.

Qubits are the quantum computing equivalent of bits used in traditional computers, but they currently are only capable of holding information for tiny fractions of a second.

Researchers have shown that a molecular complex of vanadium, carbon and sulphur may provide a solution to this problem.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3342709/Could-soon-quantum-computers-desks-Scientists-claim-cracked-problem-store-data.html

Microsoft Simulator Brings Quantum Computing One Step Closer to the Masses

#Microsoft will share its #LIQUi|> (no, that’s not a typo) simulator software with the public, so academics can test quantum computing operations on laptops or in the cloud.

On Friday, Microsoft is releasing simulation software that it says will let academics, scientists, or even do-it-yourself eggheads simulate #quantumcomputing on their laptops.

The promise of quantum computing, which breaks the nuts-and-bolts of computing down to the sub-atomic level, is that it can solve problems that go far beyond the capabilities of even today’s most powerful computers.

The current generation of computers represent all data as ones and zeros. It’s all a very binary, on-or-off proposition. By relying on smaller particles, like photons or electrons, a quantum computer would be able to look at data that can hold several contradictory states at the same time. For instance, instead of those ones and zero, a quantum computer would deal with quantum bits (also known as #qubits), which would accommodate multiple states.

http://fortune.com/2015/11/13/microsoft-quantum-computing-simulator/

Microsoft Simulator Brings Quantum Computing One Step Closer to the Masses

#Microsoft will share its #LIQUi|> (no, that’s not a typo) simulator software with the public, so academics can test quantum computing operations on laptops or in the cloud.

On Friday, Microsoft is releasing simulation software that it says will let academics, scientists, or even do-it-yourself eggheads simulate #quantumcomputing on their laptops.

The promise of quantum computing, which breaks the nuts-and-bolts of computing down to the sub-atomic level, is that it can solve problems that go far beyond the capabilities of even today’s most powerful computers.

The current generation of computers represent all data as ones and zeros. It’s all a very binary, on-or-off proposition. By relying on smaller particles, like photons or electrons, a quantum computer would be able to look at data that can hold several contradictory states at the same time. For instance, instead of those ones and zero, a quantum computer would deal with #quantumbits (also known as #qubits), which would accommodate multiple states.

http://fortune.com/2015/11/13/microsoft-quantum-computing-simulator/