Quantum Researchers Achieve 10-Fold Boost In Superposition Stability (thestack.com) 89
An anonymous reader quotes The Stack: A team of Australian researchers has developed a qubit offering ten times the stability of existing technologies. The computer scientists claim that the new innovation could significantly increase the reliability of quantum computing calculations... The new technology, developed at the University of New South Wales, has been named a 'dressed' quantum bit as it combines a single atom with an electromagnetic field. This process allows the qubit to remain in a superposition state for ten times longer than has previously been achieved. The researchers argue that this extra time in superposition could boost the performance stability of quantum computing calculations... Previously fragile and short-lived, retaining a state of superposition has been one of the major barriers to the development of quantum computing. The ability to remain in two states simultaneously is the key to scaling and strengthening the technology further.
Do you ever wonder what the world will look like when everyone has their own personal quantum computer?
Do you ever wonder what the world will look like when everyone has their own personal quantum computer?
Benchmarks (Score:5, Funny)
The team ran a benchmark on one of their quantum computers to accurately measure the new increased speed.
Unfortunately, they can no longer find the computer to repeat their test.
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of course (Score:3)
It will happen around the same time I can run an economical fusion reactor
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Do you ever wonder what the world will look like when everyone has their own personal quantum computer? It will happen around the same time I can run an economical fusion reactor
... mediated by an AI, through virtual reality. i wonder what the world will look like when people stop masturabting to diegetic prototypes like they were the real thing.
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Well if we don't get a handle on basic Internet security it will be one giant quantum-botnet cluster-fuck.
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I had to crawl under my desk with the cob webs and the COBOL manuals to get the entire depth of that wisecrack.
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all computers are made of quantum particles, and that fact causes problems for their reliable operation. A totally non-quantum computer would be very useful....
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Do you ever wonder what the world will look like when everyone has their own personal quantum computer?
What, you mean not everyone has a brain?
Stateful Encryption Solutions (Score:5, Insightful)
No? Oh well. I tried.
1. Yes yes, there are some asymmetric schemes that aren't known to be vulnerable to efficient quantum algorithms, but there will always be a buttload of lingering question marks over any scheme that doesn't involve shared secrets.
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You can't share your AES encryption keys with the world because it's the same key you'll be using to decrypt the data you want to receive.
Yes, but as I briefly explain in my addendum [slashdot.org], you would only need to set up a few different preshared symmetric keys with multiple trusted keyservers (this could be done over the phone, using a trusted friends' connection, whatever) to build a robust replacement for our current system that wouldn't need to touch asymmetric encryption for authentication or encryption that should theoretically remain secure as long as at least one of the keyservers involved in a signing or encryption operation remains uncompr
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If I'm wrong and I do have that option then I guess I really need to be reading up on the latest TLS specs...
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If you are relying on trust for encryption, then you simply can never trust it
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Could we please get to work on getting everything on the web compatible with a stateful encryption scheme (out of band preshared keys and signing schemes that aren't entirely reliant on any form[1] of asymmetric cryptography) now ?
Asymmetric schemes are as a practical matter absolutely necessary.
Instead of waiting 10-20 years and then suddenly finding out, oh crap, some government has finally has built a quantum computer powerful enough to crack RSA/ECC?
Are you sure it isn't 3-4 years or 15-73 years or perhaps 153 to 739 years? If your going to ask others you have no control over to "get to work" on something you kind of have to provide compelling evidence to support your position if you expect anyone to pay attention to you or spend their time on it.
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Asymmetric schemes are as a practical matter absolutely necessary.
No they aren't, as I've explained at length in other posts. Web of trust approaches combined with intelligent hashing can be used to automatically generate session keys known only to the two parties without any single point of failure (all of the trusted servers would need to be compromised) and without any need for manual intervention.
The only thing asymmetric buys you, in terms of hassle for the end user, is the ability to not to have to worry about a transferring around a (fairly small) master keyfil
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No they aren't, as I've explained at length in other posts.
Yes they are.
The only thing asymmetric buys you, in terms of hassle for the end user, is the ability to not to have to worry about a transferring around a (fairly small) master keyfile or passphrase.
It allows anyone to encipher messages without any possession of secret information.
It allows anyone to verify source and integrity of information without any possession of secret information.
It allows this to occur in a completely untethered, unlimited and untraceable manner.
Nothing you offer does that when you remove the shell game of punting of responsibility and convenient ignoring of underlying reality.
We know a quantum RSA break is simply a matter of time.
We know nothing of the sort. There is ZERO evidence in existence to support this assumpt
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It allows anyone to encipher messages without any possession of secret information.
Yes, but it's worth noting this doesn't allow you to encipher information without preshared information. You require CAs and such to be pre-loaded and trusted ahead of time.
If you've made that leap of trust, why not make a much easier leap of trust of using a friend's connection get your initial set of symmetric keys? Why not use an automated telephone service, and a little slip of paper that came with your new computer?
The "secret information" is, in fact, very easy to come by and only needs to be d
Don't worry (Score:1)
If "Superimposition" was real Feyman style Superimposition (all possible states simultaneously), then it wouldn't matter how long it was in superimposition, it would pass through the key at some point in that state. You wouldn't need to make it last 10x longer, you could make it last 10x shorter and it would still find the solution.
This is 'fake superimposition', quantum mechanics as marketing angle for analogue computers (D-Wave as example). This computers don't go through every possible state, rather its
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If "Superimposition" was real Feyman style Superimposition (all possible states simultaneously), then it wouldn't matter how long it was in superimposition, it would pass through the key at some point in that state. You wouldn't need to make it last 10x longer, you could make it last 10x shorter and it would still find the solution.
Is that true? I never sat down and digested the implications of the algorithm [wikipedia.org] but it's listed in Wikipedia as having O((log N)2(log log N)(log log log N)) complexity, which doesn't quite look like "instantaneous" to me.
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The problem is that while quantum superposition can be thought of as "all possible states simultaneously," it is not in general possible to choose properties of the state you get at the end (called "postselection" in the quantum computing literature). All you can do is adjust the probabilities of the different states, & for some problems, we do not know a way to make the desired state likely enough to do any better than a square root improvement in running time over a classical computer. So for that sor
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There is absolutely no need to do that. Quantum Computing has failed to scale in any way for the last 30 years. It will continue to do so. Now, if we could get everybody to change the damn default passwords, that would be something that would help with very serious problem.
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You seem to be on drugs, as your perception of reality has no relation to actual reality.
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I once had someone try to "
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My thesis statements here: He is a fraud who knows nothing about cryptography, whereas I'm a self-professed layman who knows enough to realize how messed up the status quo is. The biggest easily-solved problem regarding passwords right
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My thesis statements here: He is a fraud who knows nothing about cryptography, whereas I'm a self-professed layman who knows enough to realize how messed up the status quo is.
This amuses me no end. Actually, I have a PhD in the IT security field and about a decade of relevant experience after that. Oh, and I have been following Quantum "Computing" research for about 20 years now. Nice mathematics, does not really work in practice. The latter is unchanged from 20 years back. But keep kidding yourself. At least you are entertaining, which is far better than what most amateur crypto "experts" manage.
Incidentally, thanks to you, I found a nice reference: https://www.happybearsoftwar [happybearsoftware.com]
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This amuses me no end. Actually, I have a PhD in the IT security field and about a decade of relevant experience after that.
Then you should have no problem succinctly explaining the flaws in my proof of concept, back of napkin scheme, something that you hitherto have failed to even attempt. Quibbling over terminology doesn't count, as I readly and repeatedly admitted that some of my verbiage was probably off.
Or alternatively, you'd have no posting your credentials publicly so you can be verified; however, you seem to think that saying stuff like this aloud constitutes "stalking" you (despite the fact that you're the one who b
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This amuses me no end. Actually, I have a PhD in the IT security field and about a decade of relevant experience after that.
Then you should have no problem succinctly explaining the flaws in my proof of concept, back of napkin scheme, something that you hitherto have failed to even attempt.
Oh, I could. I just do not care enough about yet another flawed crypto idea by an amateur. Amateur crypto universally sucks, no exceptions. After you have explained to the n-th person what they did wrong and why it cannot be fixed (and have dealt with all their denials and claims that only show even more how clueless they are), you realize at that there is absolutely no point. The Dunning-Kruger Effect seems to have a strongly amplified variant for amateurs doing crypto.
Incidentally, this is a universal exp
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Amateur crypto universally sucks, no exceptions.
Except I'm not trying to or claiming to be inventing anything new. I'm explaining how you're obviously using existing tools wrong. I am almost 100% certain that most of the properties I describe are already present in some existing authentication systems (one person claimed Kerberos had the properties I described, but I don't get paid to research or implement this stuff so I haven't confirmed this). Many local authentication systems have some of the properties I'm looking for, and there's no reason whatso
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For example, I never specify the password hashing algorithm, but I do insist that one needs to not be a complete dumbass about it (e.g. the output must be significantly larger than the input so that the chanc
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just crypt it 3 times (Score:2)
crypt it 3 times with 3 different ciphers and 3 different keys.
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Cryptography does not work like that.
You still only need one key tomdeciepher it: your message is 1, the keys are 2, 3 and 5. You encrypt it to 1 * 2 * 3 * 5 = 30. To decrypt you obly need to stumble over the key 30.
Migth not work for every combination of encryption methods though.
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I still think a stateful solution with would be the best going forward, but I'm not realistically
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You can always find one single "function" that transforms a result back to its origin, regardless how many intermediate functions you use to come to that result.
Hence your idea would not work. It is actually a classic counter example in every book about encryption.
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Hence your idea would not work. It is actually a classic counter example in every book about encryption.
It absolutely would work and has been repeatedly implemented in existing products (most famously the Truecrypt derivatives, though I'm not personally a big fan of theirs.) I'm just not sure you understand the purpose of this approach, or indeed the context of this conversation.
Re-reading your prior post, you said it would "only" add multiplicative security in a brute force situation. Well, uh, that's fine. That's not a "flaw" by any means. No one should expect it to magically guard against pure brute
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The purpose in having more than one algorithm is to guard against vulnerabilities in one or more of the algorithms
Ah, that part escaped me.
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Some people are already working on cryptosystems that won't be vulnerable to attacks by quantum computers; my company is one of them.
If you're interested, look into hash-based signature schemes, lattice-based cryptography, error-correcting-code-based cryptography, isogenies, and multivariate cryptography.
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Obviously we feel the same way. :-)
Governments and financial institutions are definitely interested, but it's probably a 5-7 year project for big orgs, similar to the Y2K problem but without a definite goal post. Current best guesses are thinking we'll see a "useful" quantum computer by 2026, but that can't take into account any breakthroughs that might happen.
Personal quantum computers for what? (Score:2)
Do you ever wonder what the world will look like when everyone has their own personal quantum computer?
I rather wonder what everyone would be doing with their own personal quantum computer. Cracking encryption?
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Do you ever wonder what the world will look like when everyone has their own personal [insert any revolutionary technology created over the past several hundred years]?
Sure, the human race has wondered this on many occasions. And we're still here. Let's hope it stays that way.
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They would not at all. Quantum computers would (if they ever scale to relevant sizes) be mostly useless, except for a small set of very specific things.
The problem here is that some idiots have adopted the belief in technology as a surrogate religion. The result is that they make grand unfounded claims like this one here. These are the same morons that predict human-level AI in the near future. There is no connection to actual facts in what they claim and predict.
Do you ever wonder what the world will look like.. (Score:1)
Mayhem (Score:2)
Stop! You are killing cats!
Potential dystopia (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you ever wonder what the world will look like when everyone has their own personal quantum computer?
At the rate and direction we're going, it'll be a dystopian future world where you can't even take a dump in the privacy of your own home bathroom without some government spook having a terabyte of data collected from the 'event'. Of course, that being said, it's just as possible that while we'll have record amounts of surveillance and spying on everyone all the time, everyone will have access to continually morphing high-end encryption driven by their own quantum computers, creating a 'balance of power' on both sides of the equation.
Or, just maybe, we, as a race, grow out of this anal-retentive, must-watch-everyone-all-the-time, anxiety-driven, infantile stage of our social development, into a New Age of 'Live and Let Live' on all sides of all equations. Yeah, yeah, I know. Let a guy dream, will you?
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This is why a properly regulated democracy is important. Go out and vote!
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I'm voting third-party across the board. I know none of them will win; I'm doing it to mock our broken, near-pointless electoral system. That, and I'm sick and tired of compromising my principles for the mere expedient of 'electing the least bad candidate'. I don't like or trust either one of them, and will not have my name associated with either one of them being elected -- even if she's the foregone conclusion at this point.
Am I screwed yet? (Score:2)
qubit scalability is still unknown (Score:3)
Although this appears to be a great achievement, pending independent peer-review of course...
The fact is that that it is still a big unanswered question in physics as to how the number of qubits with superposition of their quantum states will scale in terms of time and energy. Many physicists think that this might scale scale exponentially.
So yes, we can expect to make quantum computers with a several (maybe even a few dozen) qubits with superposition of their quantum states; but if we need to double the time and energy as we add more qubits, it becomes impractical. Even if one find 10x or 100x improvements in obtaining superposition, if one does this with the large number of qubits needs to break classical public key crypto, such as RSA (via factoring), or DH/ECDH & DSA/ECDSA (via discrete log), it may take more time than the projected heat death of the universe and/or more energy than in the universe, especially with large key sizes.
Note that quantum computer systems such as those from D-Wave now have 2000 qubits, but these function without quantum superposition of their qubits, and hence cannot be used to break public key crypto. Mind you, even without superposition, D-Wave systems appear be to many times more efficient in computing some things compared to classical computers, such as for some types of simulations, so they are still useful in there own right.
Physicist should would find out how qubits scale, long before anyone is able to build one capable of breaking public key crypto. By then, there are a number of usable but less efficient (bigger & slower) quantum resistant public key alternatives which we can switch to, such as lattice based crypto, long before there is any quantum computer risk to Internet security.
In terms of science fiction risks to crypto, I am much more concerned about super-intelligent AI (or really clever human mathematicians) figuring out some shortcut to undermine trapdoor functions which public key crypto is based on, than I am with quantum computers.
And currently, the biggest risk to worry about are the countless security flaws and backdoors in modern hardware and software, such as Intel VPro/AMT, and organizations such as the NSA undermining crypto standards and protocols.
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You probably mean "inverse exponentially with effort".
I fully agree. It does not look like we are even going to ever get linear scaling, and what made digital computers great is that they did indeed get exponential scaling for a while (basically over now).
Incidentally, the D-Wave performance completely sucks once the comparison is fair. It only outperforms a digital simulation of what it does, and since a simulation of something takes far more effort than the thing itself, that is no accomplishment at all.
Five (Score:1)
Setec Astronomy (Score:2)
It looks like we are zeroing on making the current standards useless ...
Nothing x 10: Still nothing (Score:3)
The states are still "fragile and short-lived". This is not relevant in any way, form or shape, except as a detail result form a failed research direction. Other directions for alternate computing circuits have been scrapped far before the mountain of failure that "quantum computing" has accumulated by now.
Tin foil hats won't be enough anymore ! (Score:1)
The principle of quantum computers are that they use entangle qubits (when one switches state, the entangled qubit switch state too, wherever they are). Knowing that NSA puts backdoor in US fabricated routers ( link to admission by cisco), once the quatum computers are out, how long will it be, before the NSA has few qubit entagled with everyone of them ?
No air gap would ever matter
Most proba
MeowAieeMeowAiee (Score:2)
I do. And simultaneously I don't.
where will it end? (Score:2)
I won't dream of a single (or multiple) damn quantum thing until I see an equation that describes a real-world superposition scaling limit, species type "immovable object".
I believed in Moore's law because it was on a collision course with the atom, right from day one. Even as a child, I didn't believe in a Laplacian universe, in the sense that the accumulated knowledge required to compute the deterministic outcome could exist in one place—a place smaller than the universe itself—for any value
Trekkie particles (Score:2)
...has been named a 'dressed' quantum bit as it combines a single atom with an electromagnetic field."
Warp fields for particles..
forget decoherence - think accuracy! (Score:2)
So they improved the decoherence by a factor of 10. This is nice, but no reason to abandon your RSA keys just yet. The real problem with quantum computing is not decoherence (i.e. the losing of superpositions due to uncontrolled entanglement with the environment) - its quantitative imperfections.
A quantum computer is basically an analog device. As you cannot observe states, there also is no way to "refresh" slightly inaccurate states, as a normal digital computer does. A NOT has to be exactly 180 degrees an