Hacker News Reader

> Till we've crypto that's quantum, and daunt 'em.

Luckily there are asymmetric algorithms which are are secure against quantum computers, so we don't have to resort to quantum-key-exchanges.

View on HN

"Secure against quantum" doesn't really mean much because too little is known to make that claim confidently. AFAIK the term generally refers to algorithms that don't rely on factoring being hard, but instead make some different hardness assumptions that we currently don't have classical or quantum algorithms for.

For practically all computationally secure crypto we use "secure" for "no known attacks faster than we'd like". QCs just extend the set of efficient algorithms.

Indeed, but there is a much longer history of people trying and failing to break the schemes, and we have come to understand the hardness assumptions in classical crypto as probably quite reasonable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com