[HN Gopher] Quantum Algorithms for Lattice Problems
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Quantum Algorithms for Lattice Problems
        
       Author : trotro
       Score  : 219 points
       Date   : 2024-04-11 04:32 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (eprint.iacr.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (eprint.iacr.org)
        
       | ghostway wrote:
       | From the paper:
       | 
       | > Let us remark that the modulus-noise ratio achieved by our
       | quantum algorithm is still too large to break the public-key
       | encryption schemes based on (Ring)LWE used in practice. In
       | particular, we have not broken the NIST PQC standardization
       | candidates. For example, for CRYSTALS-Kyber [BDK+18], the error
       | term is chosen from a small constant range, the modulus is q =
       | 3329, the dimension is n = 256 * k where k [?] {3, 4, 5}, so we
       | can think of q as being almost linear in n. For our algorithm, if
       | we set aq [?] O(1), then our algorithm applies when q [?]
       | ^~(n^2), so we are not able to break CRYSTALS-Kyber yet. We leave
       | the task of improving the approximation factor of our quantum
       | algorithm to future work.
        
         | ghostway wrote:
         | (of course, this doesn't mean we are in the clear -- a
         | polynomial-time algorithm is alarming)
        
           | rhaps0dy wrote:
           | I don't understand your comment in the context of the
           | previous comment you posted. AIUI, the excerpt says "our
           | algorithm only applies when the modulus q is larger than n^2"
           | where n is 256 _3 or 256_ 6 (I guess?). So the excerpt would
           | be saying that the algorithm does not apply in this case,
           | because 3000 << (256*3)^2. Right?
        
             | abdullahkhalids wrote:
             | If the history of cryptography is any guide, even though
             | this result doesn't break LWE crypto-protocols, it's much
             | more likely now that someone will come up an improvement
             | that will break LWE crypto-protocols. First constructions
             | of algorithms are rarely optimal.
             | 
             | Even though the opposite is possible as well, now that a
             | concrete algorithm has been made. Someone could very well
             | prove that LWE crypto-protocols are secure against some
             | class of algorithms this algorithm belongs to.
             | 
             | Of course, right now, we should just wait for the experts
             | to read the paper and check if there are any problems.
        
           | Ar-Curunir wrote:
           | The algorithm is only quantum-polynomial time for a parameter
           | regime not applicable to the PQC candidates.
        
         | pclmulqdq wrote:
         | Factorization and discrete log are also polynomial on a quantum
         | computer, and we are very good at just increasing bit widths.
         | If CRYSTALS is also polynomial in BQP, there is very little
         | reason to invest so much into it.
         | 
         | I am still of the (very controversial) opinion that the only
         | PQC algorithm worth investing in at the expense of classical
         | algorithms is Classic McEliece. This is a code that has stood
         | up to classical and quantum cracking attempts for a very long
         | time - cracking these codes is equivalent to creating a very
         | valuable algorithm in error correcting codes.
         | 
         | The NIST also is dead set on people using only PQC or classical
         | crypto, not a wrapper with both. That is stupid IMO.
        
           | pseudo0 wrote:
           | > The NIST also is dead set on people using only PQC or
           | classical crypto, not a wrapper with both. That is stupid
           | IMO.
           | 
           | Yeah, this is rather baffling. After SIKE got broken, you'd
           | think they would have realized the importance of combining
           | these new cutting-edge candidates with something reliable.
        
           | cryptonik wrote:
           | Thanks for your comment, very interesting. About your last
           | paragraph : Do you know why NIST refuses hybridization, when
           | European agencies imposes it ? What is the political behind
           | it ?
        
             | pclmulqdq wrote:
             | The charitable interpretation I would give the NIST - and a
             | very real concern - is that they are not sure that one form
             | of cryptography doesn't weaken the other, without proofs.
             | Since these cryptosystems also tend to work in different
             | number fields, it's very hard to prove anything about their
             | interactions at all.
             | 
             | We all know the uncharitable interpretation, that the PQC
             | algorithms may be backdoored.
        
             | kamilner wrote:
             | NIST does not refuse hybridization, they will be publishing
             | guidance on hybrid schemes in the draft of SP 800-227 at
             | the same time as the final standards. They don't impose it
             | though, because at a large scale it's more efficient to run
             | just (fast) ML-KEM instead of (fast) ML-KEM + (slower)
             | ECDH, which more than doubles your computation time for
             | what they see as no benefit.
        
           | Ar-Curunir wrote:
           | The remark clearly states that CRYSTALs is not affected by
           | this attack.
        
           | less_less wrote:
           | It's NSA who wants only PQC and not hybrid. NIST is fine with
           | hybrid. They don't plan to standardize hybrids as entire
           | units, but they said they plan to standardize the KDF modes
           | you'd need to build them.
        
       | deyiao wrote:
       | If the findings of this paper hold up, I believe it could pretty
       | much undo a decade of NIST's efforts in post-quantum
       | cryptography. a seismic shift in the world of cryptography.
        
         | kyoji wrote:
         | Not entirely true, there are other PKE and DSA algorithms that
         | were/are a part of the competition that used problems not
         | related to lattices. However, the lattice-based options were
         | often among the fastest and smallest.
        
           | tux3 wrote:
           | Isogenies vindicated? :)
        
             | tptacek wrote:
             | I know you're kidding but for the benefit of the class
             | isogeny schemes were pulled when their best candidate
             | design turned out to be breakable with a Python script
             | owing to obscure non-cryptographic mathematic research from
             | the 1990s.
             | 
             | I'd expect we're not getting isogenies back. :)
        
               | j2kun wrote:
               | I was at a conference with some of these folks recently
               | and they stated some glimmer of hope remains for
               | repairing isogeny-based crypto. I guess we'll see.
        
               | pvg wrote:
               | _breakable with a Python script_
               | 
               | The traditional, elegant method of a more civilized age:
               | 
               |  _Last on the program were Len Adleman and his computer,
               | which had accepted a challenge on the first night of the
               | conference. The hour passed; various techniques for
               | attacking knapsack systems with different characteristics
               | were heard; and the Apple II sat on the table waiting to
               | reveal the results of its labors. At last Adleman rose to
               | speak mumbling something self-deprecatingly about "the
               | theory first, the public humiliation later" and beginning
               | to explain his work. All the while the figure of Carl
               | Nicolai moved silently in the background setting up the
               | computer and copying a sequence of numbers from its
               | screen onto a transparency. At last another transparency
               | was drawn from a sealed envelope and the results placed
               | side by side on the projector. They were identical. The
               | public humiliation was not Adleman's, it was knapsack's._
               | 
               | W. Diffie, The first ten years of public-key
               | cryptography, _Proceedings of the IEEE_ , vol. 76, no. 5,
               | pp. 560-577, May 1988
        
               | maple3142 wrote:
               | AFAIK, only SIDH-like schemes that exposes auxiliary
               | points are broken, so others schemes like CSIDH may have
               | some chances? https://issikebrokenyet.github.io/
        
         | bawolff wrote:
         | This is the reason why nist did the decade of work - to focus
         | effort on figuring out what options are secure. Finding out an
         | option is not secure is a good thing. Its why we are putting
         | effort into PQC now before quantum computers are a real threat.
        
         | tptacek wrote:
         | No? One of the side effects of running an open competition is
         | that it focused attention on a variety of competing options for
         | this, all of which were formalized, recorded, and publicly
         | evaluated by the world's academic cryptography experts. We're
         | strictly better off as a result, and _much_ of NIST 's own work
         | would still be valuable even in a hypothetical scenario in
         | which none of LWE was quantum-safe.
        
       | anonymousDan wrote:
       | Some initial Reddit discussion here:
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/cryptography/comments/1c0vlfx/the_f...
        
         | JohnKemeny wrote:
         | And a question at crypto.stackexchange:
         | https://crypto.stackexchange.com/q/111385
        
       | dogeprotocol wrote:
       | Will be interesting to see how this pans out.
        
       | axblount wrote:
       | Does this result apply to all LWE problems? Does this approach
       | care about LWE vs Ring-LWE at all?
       | 
       | If so, it's a big blow to systems like FrodoKEM that banked on
       | unstructured lattices providing higher security.
        
         | tux3 wrote:
         | Not a lattice expert, so add salt to taste, but it looks like
         | LWE in general (incluring RLWE)
         | 
         | But the current attack essentially wants q > n^2, so even if it
         | is confirmed, not all LWE schemes are dead. There will
         | certainly be people who tweak the params in response and carry
         | on.
         | 
         | However, attacks only get better. And for people in FHE who are
         | squeezed between performance problems and dangerously thin
         | security parameters, it is a bad day if confirmed. There's no
         | credible practical alternative to LWE for FHE...
        
         | j2kun wrote:
         | RingLWE security reduces to LWE via a relatively simple
         | reduction (see https://www.jeremykun.com/2022/12/28/estimating-
         | the-security...).
        
       | tromp wrote:
       | How does this affect these statements on Wikipedia [1]
       | 
       | > some lattice-based constructions appear to be resistant to
       | attack by both classical and quantum computers. Furthermore, many
       | lattice-based constructions are considered to be secure under the
       | assumption that certain well-studied computational lattice
       | problems cannot be solved efficiently.
       | 
       | and [2] ?
       | 
       | > One class of quantum resistant cryptographic algorithms is
       | based on a concept called "learning with errors" introduced by
       | Oded Regev in 2005.
       | 
       | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice-based_cryptography
       | 
       | [2]
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_learning_with_errors_key_...
        
         | doomrobo wrote:
         | The idea of "appear to be resistant to attack" is an empirical
         | one. When someone says that, they are saying that we simply
         | have not found a good attack against this problem. That can
         | change any day, in principle. Unfortunately, "we don't know of
         | an attack" is about as strong a statement you can make in
         | cryptography, when talking about a fundamental hardness
         | assumption. More verbosely, you'd say "the best known attacks
         | take 2^whatever operations on a computer (classical or
         | quantum), and that's expensive, so we're probably fine unless
         | someone makes a significant leap tomorrow"
        
           | adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
           | imo, this isn't quite true. there are a lot of areas where we
           | can say "this looks sufficiently secure for now, but given
           | the rate of advancement in this area in the last decade, we
           | expect it will probably lose a few bits of security in the
           | next decade"
        
         | wbl wrote:
         | Do you know how little we know? We don't even know P isn't
         | PSPACE!
        
         | westurner wrote:
         | CRYSTALS-Kyber, NTRU, SABER, CRYSTALS-Dilithium, and FALCON are
         | lattice-based method finalists in NIST PQC Round 3.
         | 
         | [1] NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIST_Post-Quantum_Cryptography...
         | 
         | The NTRU article mentions PQ resistance to Shor's only, other
         | evaluations, and that IEEE Std 1363.1 (2008) and the X9
         | financial industry spec already specify NTRU, which is a Round
         | 3 Finalist lattice-based method.
         | 
         | In [1] Under "Selected Algorithms 2022", the article lists
         | "Lattice: CRYSTALS-Kyber, CRYSTALS-Dilithium, FALCON; Hash-
         | based: SPHINCS+".
         | 
         | Round 4 includes Code-based and Supersingular elliptic curve
         | isogeny algos.
         | 
         | FWIU There's not yet a TLS 1.4/2.0 that specifies which
         | [lattice-based] PQ algos webservers would need to implement to
         | support a new PQ TLS spec.
        
       | troq13 wrote:
       | Just a bit more improvement and they might be able to use a
       | computer that doesn't exist to break an encrypting scheme nobody
       | uses. Alarming.
        
         | j2kun wrote:
         | Major systems and big companies like Google are already mid-
         | transition to PQC. So it is alarming.
        
           | anonymousDan wrote:
           | Furthermore this could have implications for fully
           | homomorphic encryption schemes based on lattices. But
           | nonetheless I laughed :)
        
             | rgmerk wrote:
             | So a thing which is currently useless because it runs at a
             | speed that makes the Harvard Mark I look fast, might be
             | rendered useless if a thing that doesn't physically exist
             | despite decades of effort is constructed? :P)
        
           | AnthonyMouse wrote:
           | More to the point, the purpose of the encrypting system
           | nobody uses is to have something to use if anybody ever makes
           | the computer that doesn't exist. Now if that happens, what?
        
             | tempaway4785751 wrote:
             | We really need to get people to take really complicated
             | risks that might never come to pass much more seriously.
             | Perhaps someone smart can explain the really complicated
             | risks that might never come to pass to the government that
             | doesn't really look beyond the three year time horizon and
             | get them to allocate some of their money that doesn't
             | really exist to help.
        
           | troq13 wrote:
           | Google has dozens of chrome extensions in their app store
           | that anyone can check in 2 mins are plain malware, and they
           | do nothing about it. If they cared about security that's what
           | they would be working on, these guys just want to publish
           | papers.
        
             | j2kun wrote:
             | I'm sure they have thought more about how to prioritize
             | security threats than an anonymous internet commenter.
        
               | troq13 wrote:
               | The fact that you work at Google and did not care to ask
               | what are the extensions just confirms to me nobody there
               | cares.
        
               | basementcat wrote:
               | I'll bite; what are some of these extensions?
        
               | troq13 wrote:
               | HBO watch party. If relays a fake costumer support chat
               | if you visit a site like united airlines, that puts you
               | in touch with scammers (probably does other malwary stuff
               | too). A friend almost got scammed by this, they reported
               | it to someone they know who works at Google and a couple
               | months later the extension is still up.
               | 
               | Tbh that is the only actual example I know, but after
               | poking around a bit, ppl who actually know about security
               | say that's the state of things with these extension and
               | app store apps, and nobody at google seems to think
               | fixing it is their job.
               | 
               | Funny thing is, they were asking this google friend for
               | advice about getting rid of the malicious chat before
               | they realized it was this chrome extension. The advice
               | the google employee gave was to format the computer (it
               | wouldn't have fixed it because once they logged into
               | chrome again all the extensions would come back).
               | 
               | Hard sell that people running this clown show could be
               | doing PQC in any meaningful sense (other than publishing
               | papers. The papers are fine).
        
               | j2kun wrote:
               | There was a previous one removed a few months ago for
               | malware called HBO Max Watch Party. Was that it? If you
               | have a specific extension id I can file a bug on your
               | behalf.
               | 
               | And after reading about the situation internally, I can
               | confirm there are dozens of people working on this
               | problem, and that you have no idea what you're talking
               | about. So please try to be a bit more humble.
        
               | troq13 wrote:
               | Yes I am checking the link my friend sent me now it it
               | was that one, it is down. Thank you for your interest.
        
               | troq13 wrote:
               | Actually never mind, I double checked and it was just HBO
               | watch party (it is still up and has the malware). I
               | appreciate if you can take a look at this.
        
               | troq13 wrote:
               | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hbo-watch-
               | party/dn...
               | 
               | This is the link to the malicious extension.
        
               | j2kun wrote:
               | "One person doesn't care, therefore nobody cares"
        
               | troq13 wrote:
               | Sadly you are like the 6th google employee I personally
               | told about this (and it is still up).
        
               | hackerlight wrote:
               | Arrogance.
        
               | Attrecomet wrote:
               | A fitting reply to a total non-sequitur, more like. A
               | huge corps handling of browser extensions has absolutely
               | zero to do with encryption algorithms, and security is
               | such a big field that "care about security" means nothing
               | at all.
               | 
               | The comment was just a chance to vent anger at Google in
               | an unproductive way.
        
               | troq13 wrote:
               | It is a pretty random example, but it is meant to say
               | that the math is rarely the limiting factor for security.
               | People spend time thinking about this type of stuff
               | because they like it, not because it is actually
               | important for security.
               | 
               | In my mind RSA is the last instance of a mathematical
               | development changing the game of security. After that it
               | is twists of the same idea on more obscure mathematical
               | objects, and pyrotechnic protocols that only the truly
               | unhinged (ethereum people) are willing to try out in
               | practice.
        
           | adastra22 wrote:
           | Their deployment is additive. You would need to break both
           | the PCQ and classical schemes, so they'd be unaffected here.
        
             | less_less wrote:
             | They wouldn't be immediately hacked, especially as this is
             | a quantum algorithm anyway. But if it turns out that the
             | current PQC schemes are not quantum-resistant, then that
             | work will need to be redone (unless the progress in quantum
             | computing stalls out, I guess). The current result does not
             | break Kyber / Dilithium / NTRU variants / Falcon / FrodoKEM
             | even assuming it's correct, but obviously there's some
             | concern that the a follow-up result might improve on it.
             | 
             | The NIST process has been running for 7 years, though they
             | do have a few "non-lattice" schemes waiting for a 4th round
             | of standardization: the code-based schemes Classic
             | McEliece, BIKE and HQC. We could switch over to those, and
             | the work to add crypto-agility to protocols would not be
             | wasted, but the work on lattice software and hardware would
             | be largely wasted.
             | 
             | Also, error-correcting codes are also solving short-vector
             | problems in a lattice! But since the lattice has a
             | different shape maybe it would be fine? After codes the
             | list gets pretty thin... like there's CSIDH, but it's very
             | slow, has partial quantum attacks, and it isn't very
             | trusted after SIKE got broken in half.
        
               | adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
               | there's always post quantum rsa
               | https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/351.pdf. yes it sucks, but
               | at least for the quantum computers we're likely to have
               | 20 years from now, you could probably get away with a 1gb
               | key...
        
               | adastra22 wrote:
               | Lamport signatures work and are PQC. There are solutions
               | that are practical to use (1gb rsa keys are not). Just
               | not drop in replacements without large tradeoffs.
        
       | j2kun wrote:
       | I work on homomorphic encryption, and there are some rumors
       | circulating that, if this checks out, it will break some of the
       | leading FHE schemes like BFV, where the moduli used are quite
       | large (in the hundreds of bits or even over a thousand bits).
        
         | ilya_m wrote:
         | ... only if scalable quantum computers exist.
        
           | warkdarrior wrote:
           | If scalable quantum computers do not exist, we do not need
           | PQC.
        
             | foota wrote:
             | Hemomorphic encryption is not the same thing as post
             | quantum crypto?
        
               | deknos wrote:
               | Homomorphic Encryption does often use lattice mathematics
        
               | Ar-Curunir wrote:
               | But classically secure FHE is still a useful thing (even
               | if it is broken by hypothetical quantum computers).
        
               | Beldin wrote:
               | No, they're orthogonal terms. Homomorphic encryption is
               | encryption where a specific operation on ciphertexts
               | (e.g., x) translates into an operation on the underlying
               | plaintexts (e.g., +). With fully homomorphic encryption,
               | there are even two such ciphertext operations (and
               | corresponding plaintext operations).
               | 
               | Post quantum crypto is cryptography that cannot be broken
               | by a quantum computer. This is rather nebulous, since we
               | haven't yet discovered all possible algorithms that can
               | run on quantum computers. Before you know it, someone
               | comes along and finds a new efficient algorithm for
               | quantum computers that breaks something thought to be
               | post-quantum. Which is what is happening here - if the
               | results stand up under scrutiny.
               | 
               | Sidenote: it may turn out that any crypto scheme which
               | supports some operation on ciphertexts that translates
               | into an operation on the plaintexts is quantum-resilient
               | (or, vice versa, quantum-vulnerable). But tgat would
               | require a fornal proof.
        
             | sgt101 wrote:
             | We need PQC about 20 years before practical, scalable gate
             | quantum computers appear (if they can do all the right
             | gates).
             | 
             | I think that this will be signaled when someone factors a
             | 32 bit integer on one. At that point I guess it'll be about
             | 20 years before someone can factor a 2048 bit integer, and
             | I'll get twitchy about what I am sending over the wire with
             | PKI. My feeling is that all my secrets from 20 years ago
             | are irrelevant to life now so I feel 20 years of warning is
             | quite sufficient.
        
               | adastra22 wrote:
               | We are within 20 years of scalable quantum computers
               | already.
        
               | adrianN wrote:
               | The record for integer factoring on quantum computers was
               | on the order of factoring fifteen into three times five
               | the last time I checked. Can we do three digits now?
        
               | baby wrote:
               | The last time I checked they even cheated to factor
               | fifteen
        
               | WJW wrote:
               | You should check again. Numbers like 1099551473989 have
               | been factored successfully by now. The arxiv link in the
               | sibling post is a good start.
        
               | adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
               | biggest number factored by a quantum computer isn't the
               | right question. the right question is biggest number
               | factored using a polynomial time algorithm. the answer to
               | that as far as I know of still 15 (although I would be
               | interested in papers that show more progress)
        
               | adastra22 wrote:
               | Application of Shor's algorithm is currently limited by
               | available error correction. Long-lived qubits would
               | eliminate that need and drastically increase
               | capabilities.
        
               | sgt101 wrote:
               | I'm not sure that you are correct. I've tried to read
               | https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.10072 in the last day and if
               | my reading is right (I am very stretched by this stuff so
               | I am very happy to be corrected) then no amount of error
               | correction will rescue Shor's - only zero error phase
               | gates. I suspect that a similar story is true for native
               | QML, as quantum memory scales it's just going to get
               | exponentially harder to maintain it.
        
               | adastra22 wrote:
               | That's what I'm saying, effectively zero error phase
               | gates are on the horizon. My company is working on the
               | tech that would make them possible, for example, and we
               | have competitors working on other paths to the same
               | thing.
        
               | pclmulqdq wrote:
               | I believe the current record using Shor's algorithm is
               | 31, done by IBM recently.
        
               | sgt101 wrote:
               | This is one of the things I really resent about QC as a
               | field - there's so much chaff where one paper will say
               | "we can do x" and the reality is that x does not mean
               | what everyone thought that they meant. Number of Qbits is
               | another thing - also what gates are implemented in the
               | devices; how long they can run for etc etc etc.
        
               | eigenket wrote:
               | Significantly larger numbers than 15 have been factored
               | [1] but not using Shor's algorithm. Shor's algorithm is
               | particularly sensitive to noise/errors in your quantum
               | computer and isn't going to be useful unless we get a
               | properly error corrected machine working. The algorithms
               | used in [1] are considerably less fancy (with worse
               | asymptomatic performance) but are more resilient to
               | noise.
               | 
               | [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.07825
        
               | adastra22 wrote:
               | And to extend off this comment, there are methods being
               | worked on for building qubits that are intrinsically
               | noise-free and don't need the exponential number of error
               | correcting operations. When those are available, you'll
               | see a step function increase in capabilities.
        
               | andrepd wrote:
               | >When those are available
               | 
               | Pretty big if
        
               | adastra22 wrote:
               | We're working on it.
        
               | s1dev wrote:
               | For a circuit of size C, the size of a fault tolerant
               | circuit to compute the same thing is O(C polylog C)
               | 
               | https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9906129
        
               | adastra22 wrote:
               | Technically correct is the best kind of correct.
        
               | adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
               | that paper is factoring with an algorithm that almost
               | certainly isn't polynomial time. That paper is only
               | slightly better than the quantum factoring algorithm of
               | making a quantum computer perform trial division.
        
               | eigenket wrote:
               | I agree
        
               | sgt101 wrote:
               | Interesting - why is Shor's sensitive to noise? Is that
               | the Rphase gates?
        
               | eigenket wrote:
               | Yeah, for Shor's algorithm to factor an integer of order
               | 2^k you need controlled phase gates with phases roughly
               | order 2^{-k} (very roughly, with some caveats, but lets
               | just say you need some small ones) these very small phase
               | gates are susceptible to even very small errors.
               | 
               | This is a gross oversimplification. For the true version
               | see here
               | 
               | https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.10072
        
               | sgt101 wrote:
               | thank you
        
               | sgt101 wrote:
               | Took me a while to read it - seems to be a pretty
               | significant take down of anything that uses a QFT -
               | basically reality won't permit it.
        
               | ziofill wrote:
               | This is a minority point of view on quantum computing, as
               | I understand.
        
               | sgt101 wrote:
               | Wot? Science isn't a democracy! The parent refs a
               | preprint from a very reputable author, which has been
               | somewhat peer-reviewed already *
               | 
               | Now, I got to the bottom of page 6 and my maths failed
               | me: I can't follow the expansion, but I expect that the
               | reviewers of Physica A or where ever the gentleman who
               | wrote this sends it off to will be able to check. I do
               | follow the principle of the proof though and it's pretty
               | intuitive to me, for what that's worth.
               | 
               | Anyway, I can't say I give a hoot what the majority or
               | minority think - and nor should anyone else. Read the
               | paper for yourself and make up your mind.
               | 
               | * The author thanks Al Aho, Dan Boneh, P eter Ga cs, Zvi
               | Galil, Fred Green, Steve Homer, Leonid Levin, Dick
               | Lipton, Ashwin Maran, Albert Meyer, Ken Regan, Ron
               | Rivest, Peter Shor, Mike Sipser, Les Valiant, and Ben
               | Young for insightful comments. He also thanks Eric Bach
               | for inspiring discus- sions on some of the number
               | theoretic estimates, and we hope to report some further
               | improvements soon [7]. A similar result can be proved for
               | Shor's algorithm computing Discrete Logarithm, and will
               | be reported later.
        
               | eigenket wrote:
               | To be clear: there are two related but ultimately
               | separate claims here.
               | 
               | 1. Shor's algorithm won't work on the very noisy quantum
               | computer we have for the near and intermediate future.
               | 
               | 2. Shor's algorithm won't work on a hypothetical error
               | corrected future quantum computer.
               | 
               | Claim 1 is pretty convincing proved in the paper. Claim 2
               | is not. The author puts forward some arguments for claim
               | 2 in the introduction and conclusions but explicitly
               | states that he does not prove it.
               | 
               | I _think_ the point of view that the person you 're
               | replying to is talking about is claim 2. There are pretty
               | good reasons to believe that claim 2 is false in my
               | opinion, in particular we have threshold theorems for
               | quantum error correction which should "save the day" for
               | quantum computing.
        
               | tsimionescu wrote:
               | I couldn't quickly find any info, but does this algorithm
               | show the kind of exponential quantum speed up needed to
               | break RSA? Because if it's just slightly faster than the
               | best known classical algorithms, then it's enitely
               | irrelevant to the question of when we need to switch our
               | encryption schemes (even though it may be a significant
               | advancement in the area of quantum algorithms research).
        
               | eigenket wrote:
               | I think its unknown, but my feeling is that the answer is
               | almost certainly no.
               | 
               | These sort of variational algorithms are appealing (to
               | some people) because they're potentially usable on the
               | sort of noisy small quantum computers we have today and
               | in the near term future, but they aren't very fancy. I
               | think in general what you'd expect to get out of them is
               | a sort of Grover's algorithm-like square root speedup.
        
               | adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
               | it's generally believed that the algorithm is somewhere
               | in between ecm and quadratic sieve (so slower by a super-
               | polynomial factor than NFS which is the best classical
               | algorithm)
        
               | vikramkr wrote:
               | I'm not sure that's the right question. It's more, is
               | there a chance at all of anyone figuring it out, and
               | given the enormous scale of the security risk that poses,
               | we should start proactively mitigating those threats. If
               | fusion energy goes from perpetually 10 years away to
               | suddenly here, that's pretty much just a white swan. If
               | quantum computers happen, that's a global security risk
               | before it's a civilizational upgrade.
        
             | Ar-Curunir wrote:
             | FHE is still only known from lattices, and has nothing to
             | do with post-quantum computers.
        
           | odyssey7 wrote:
           | I wouldn't bet against the existence of a modern Bletchley
           | Park analogue.
        
       | deknos wrote:
       | Are the OpenSSH lattice instances or the ones of DJB affected by
       | this problem?
        
       | tschumacher wrote:
       | Some post-quantum signatures like CRYSTALS-Dilithium are based on
       | lattices. Makes me think that quantum key distribution (what I've
       | been working on for the past 6 months) has a chance to actually
       | become useful instead of being only of interest to academics and
       | to a few companies that sell overpriced solutions to paranoids.
        
         | Vecr wrote:
         | Code based systems are still in, and classic McEliece could be
         | extended to ~50 MiB for a keypair and still be way more
         | practical than QKD. Just run the max current classic McEliece
         | spec hybrid post quantum with X448.
        
           | sgt101 wrote:
           | NSA is that you?
        
             | karma_pharmer wrote:
             | please explain?
             | 
             | OP recommended McElice, not DUAL_EC_DRDBG. Is there
             | something I should know about the former?
        
         | hannob wrote:
         | QKD does not solve the problem that quantum computers create,
         | and cannot replace public key cryptography. That's a common
         | misconception that the marketing departments of QKD research
         | tries to keep alive.
         | 
         | Even under ideal conditions (whether these can exist is
         | debatable), the best QKD gives you is a securely encrypted
         | channel _only when you already have a securely authenticated
         | channel_. The latter is extremely important, makes the whole
         | thing mostly useless, and is often omitted by QKD advocates.
        
           | HappyPanacea wrote:
           | If you don't have an authenticated channel, you are
           | susceptible to a MITM attack which makes any asymmetric
           | crypto useless. Thus I think there is an implicit assumption
           | in any asymmetric crypto that you already have an
           | authenticated channel. Or did I miss something?
        
             | ilya_m wrote:
             | Grossly simplifying, Alice and Bob may establish an
             | authenticated channel either by physical means (a wire) or
             | by some combination of certificates/passwords and out-of-
             | band authentication. Most of the time, QKD implicitly
             | assumes the former - a line-of-sight connection or a fiber-
             | optics cable. In these circumstances the parties might as
             | well exchange flash drives with one-time pads, similarly to
             | how the Kremlin-White House hotline was protected.
        
               | less_less wrote:
               | I'm not a huge fan of QKD, but there is a potential use
               | case for it. Basically, for digital signatures we have
               | schemes like SPHINCS+, and perhaps also PICNIC and FAEST,
               | which don't require "mathematically structured"
               | assumptions like other public-key crypto, but instead are
               | secure based on not much more than one-way functions. If
               | (and it's a big if) quantum computers can break all those
               | structured assumptions but not AES/SHA, then we would
               | still have secure public-key signatures, certificates etc
               | but not KEMs.
               | 
               | But QKD can, in principle, securely distribute keys if
               | you have a way to exchange quantum state (e.g. line-of-
               | sight or some sort of currently-nonexistent quantum
               | router) and a classical authenticated channel. SPHINCS+
               | could provide that authenticated channel. In that case
               | QKD would enable secure key exchange even between parties
               | who don't have a pre-shared secret.
               | 
               | Of course right now, all of that is science fiction.
        
       | hellobye wrote:
       | Hello everyone. I am a college student and currently new to this
       | field. If possible can somone explain in simple terms that what
       | real future impacts would this paper can create?
        
         | swells34 wrote:
         | It would be silly not to first ask your interpretation, given
         | that you are a college student.
         | 
         | Since this is about quantum computing, real world effects are
         | very likely to be none except an exorbitant amount of grant
         | money.
        
       | da-bacon wrote:
       | People seemed to be focusing on the fact that this wouldn't break
       | the NIST leading PQC public key cryptosystem, but I think that
       | misses the point. This takes a problem at the core of this
       | security, which previously only had an exponential approximation,
       | and finds a polynomial approximation. Sure that polynomial is too
       | high O(n^4.5) to break the leading proposed systems, but I mean
       | are you really feeling safe when an exponential just changed to a
       | polynomial?
       | 
       | An analogy would be something like this. Factoring is hard. We
       | base RSA on the hardness of this problem and there we use numbers
       | that are the product of two primes. Someone just found an
       | algorithm that doesn't work to find the product of two primes,
       | but can take a product of four primes and return two products of
       | two primes. Do you feel safe with RSA?
       | 
       | Anyway the paper could be wrong or it could be right, it will
       | take a while for those in the field to dig through this. As a
       | cautionary tale, there have been a few extra good quantum people
       | who have proposed quantum attacks on lattice problems that have
       | later been shown to have bugs.
        
         | Ar-Curunir wrote:
         | The running time of attacks hasn't suddenly become O(n^4.5).
         | The latter figure describe the noise ratio for which the LWE
         | assumption becomes broken in quantum polynomial time.
         | 
         | The proposed post-quantum encryption schemes use a much smaller
         | noise ratio which (at the moment) is not affected by these
         | attacks.
        
           | da-bacon wrote:
           | I didn't say the runtime did I? The approximation ratio went
           | from exponential to polynomial noise ratio. This just went
           | from 2^n to n^4.5 and everyone seems to say "oh this is
           | fine".
        
             | Ar-Curunir wrote:
             | The attackable noise ratio did not go from exponential to
             | polynomial either. It went from classically subexponential
             | to quantumly polynomial.
        
               | da-bacon wrote:
               | Yes sub exponential which is splitting hairs. Exp(O(n log
               | log n / log n)). Thanks for the acknowledgment that I
               | didn't say runtime.
        
       | Beldin wrote:
       | Headline should be "polynomial time quantum algorithms for
       | solving lattices" or somesuch. The polynomial time aspect is the
       | main contribution here - and also why this is attracting
       | attention.
        
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