A quantum computer in the next decade could crack the encryption our society relies on using Shor's Algorithm. Head to https://brilliant.org/veritasium to start your free 30day trial, and the first 200 people get 20% off an annual premium subscription.
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A huge thank you to those who helped us understand this complex field and ensure we told this story accurately Dr. Lorenz Panny, Prof. Serge Fehr, Dr. Dustin Moody, Prof. Benne de Weger, Prof. Tanja Lange, PhD candidate Jelle Vos, Gorjan Alagic, and Jack Hidary.
A huge thanks to those who helped us with the math behind Shor’s algorithm Prof. David Elkouss, Javier Pagan Lacambra, Marc Serra Peralta, and Daniel Bedialauneta Rodriguez.
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References:
Joseph, D., et al. (2022). Transitioning organizations to postquantum cryptography. Nature, 605(7909), 237243. https://ve42.co/Joseph2022
Bernstein, D. J., & Lange, T. (2017). Postquantum cryptography. Nature, 549(7671), 188194. https://ve42.co/Bernstein2017
An Insight, An Idea with Sundar Pichai Quantum Computing, Wold Economic Forum via YouTube https://ve42.co/QCWEFyt
Migrating to PostQuantum Cryptography, The White House https://ve42.co/PQCWhiteHouse
Kotas, W. A. (2000). A brief history of cryptography. University of Tennessee https://ve42.co/Kotas2000
Hellman, M. (1976). New directions in cryptography. IEEE transactions on Information Theory, 22(6), 644654. https://ve42.co/Hellman1976
Rivest, R. L., Shamir, A., & Adleman, L. (1978). A method for obtaining digital signatures and publickey cryptosystems. Communications of the ACM, 21(2), 120126. https://ve42.co/Rivest1978
Kak, A. (2023). Lecture 12: PublicKey Cryptography and the RSA Algorithm https://ve42.co/Kak2023
Calderbank, M. (2007). The RSA Cryptosystem: History, Algorithm, Primes. University of Chicago. https://ve42.co/Calderbank2007
Cryptographic Key Length Recommendation, Keylength https://ve42.co/KeyLength
Coppersmith, D. (2002). An approximate Fourier transform useful in quantum factoring. arXiv preprint quantph/0201067. https://ve42.co/Coppersmith2002
Quantum Fourier Transform, Qiskit https://ve42.co/Qiskit
Shor, P. W. (1994, November). Algorithms for quantum computation: discrete logarithms and factoring. In Proceedings 35th annual symposium on foundations of computer science (pp. 124134). IEEE. https://ve42.co/Shor1994
Shor’s algorithm, Wikipedia https://ve42.co/ShorWiki
Euler’s totient function, Wikipedia https://ve42.co/EulerWiki
Asfaw, A. (2020). Shor’s Algorithm Lecture Series, Qiskit Summer School https://ve42.co/ShorYT
How Quantum Computers Break Encryption, minutephysics via YouTube https://ve42.co/PQCmpyt
Breaking RSA Encryption an Update on the StateoftheArt, QuintessenceLabs https://ve42.co/QuintessenceLabs
O'Gorman, J., & Campbell, E. T. (2017). Quantum computation with realistic magicstate factories. Physical Review A, 95(3), 032338. https://ve42.co/OGorman2017
Gidney, C., & Ekerå, M. (2021). How to factor 2048 bit RSA integers in 8 hours using 20 million noisy qubits. Quantum, 5, 433. https://ve42.co/Gidney2021
2021 Quantum Threat Timeline Report, Global Risk Institute https://ve42.co/QuantumRisk
The IBM Quantum Development Roadmap, IBM https://ve42.co/IBMQC
PostQuantum Cryptography, Computer Security Resource Center (NIST) https://ve42.co/CSRCPQC
Alagic, G., et al. (2022). Status report on the third round of the NIST postquantum cryptography standardization process. US Department of Commerce, NIST. https://ve42.co/Alagic2022
Thijs, L. (2015). Lattice cryptography and lattice cryptanalysis https://ve42.co/Thijs2015
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Written by Casper Mebius & Derek Muller
Edited by Trenton Oliver
Filmed by Raquel Nuno
Animated by Ivy Tello & Mike Radjabov
Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images & Pond5
Music from Epidemic Sound & Jonny Hyman
Produced by Derek Muller, Petr Lebedev, & Emily Zhang