The quest for quantum-proof encryption just made a leap forward - 0 views
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John Kiff on 03 Aug 20While quantum machines are still a long way from being able to break modern encryption, US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched a competition in 2016 to develop new standards for cryptography that will be more quantum-proof. The winners are set to be announced in 2022, but last week the organization announced that it had narrowed the initial field of 69 contenders down to just 15. And so far a single approach to "post-quantum cryptography" accounts for the majority of the finalists: lattice-based cryptography. Lattice-based cryptography instead uses enormous grids with billions of individual points across thousands of dimensions. Breaking the code means getting from one specific point to another-which is essentially impossible unless you know the route. NIST thinks is that lattice problems are really hard, but they seem quite efficient in terms of time to generate keys, time to construct signatures, and also efficient in terms of memory.