Dangers of Quantum Hacking: A threat to Encryption

Quantum hacking is the biggest threat to encryption. 

Quantum computers have limitless potentials. There is no doubt that one day quantum computers will find a cure for cancer or help in eliminating world hunger. But along with this, they could also help hackers get access to our most private data by breaking encryption. While quantum computing is beneficial, quantum hacking is dangerous. 

What is quantum hacking?

To be precise quantum hacking is the use of quantum computers to carry out malicious actions. Quantum hacking is performed by modern cryptographic strategies which often use private and public keys to encrypt and decrypt data through a mathematical equation. These mathematical equations can be easily broken by advanced quantum computers. It would surely take a while, but the process is still possible using the nonlinear protocol of quantum computing.

When quantum hacking becomes possible, a system that repairs the existing internet security practices needs to be developed. If not, it would be easy for hackers to break through data and cause costly issues.

Threat to Encryption 

With digital transformation, everything is now digital, even data, and all our digital data like emails, chats, online purchases, etc are encrypted which makes it unreadable without a decryption key. This prevents our data in the cloud and our computers from being tampered with. AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) is the most commonly used method for encrypting all this data. With today's classical computers it is impossible to break AES encryption, but through quantum computers, it is possible to decrypt the encrypted data. 

It is believed that quantum-optimized algorithms and artificial intelligence will increasingly be used together in breaking the mathematically based cryptographic algorithms. While performing a huge superposition of possible results to these algorithms requires a quantum device in the millions of qubits and the largest quantum computer today has just 72 qubits, similar results can be obtained with quantum-optimized algorithms performing within a computer emulator running on consumer gaming video cards. 

With advanced quantum computing and with readily available hardware paired with new software processor-heavy brute force hacking techniques can be done much faster. 

There is an increasing fear among cybersecurity specialists that quantum computing will result in the nightfall of the existing encryption standard which means one day all encrypted files could be decrypted one day. Already hackers have been using mobile devices that can collect credit card information with the credit card holder being unnoticed. Therefore quantum computing devices will open the door for remarkably more cyberthreats. There are numerous benefits of quantum computing but if it falls into the hands of malicious actors then it would be dangerous. 

Already hackers have stolen encrypted data, now it's time to wait for the day when they can use quantum computers to decode those files. Everything is vulnerable, from financial statements to healthcare records. It is required for governments and businesses as well as consumers to take action to protect their data. 

Is Prevention Possible? 

Experts say that quantum hacking is only preventable if quantum cryptography encryption keys are so entangled that even the most advanced quantum computers cannot break them. The only drawback to this is that continual encryption would lead to very lengthy keys that would ultimately slow down the process.

While engineers are focused on developing the most advanced quantum computer, cybersecurity specialists are emphasizing bringing out a new form of cryptography that would protect against quantum hacks. This is known as post-quantum cryptography or PQC. Experts are presently creating PQC solutions, but these will need to be regulated and widely adopted.