No, Quantum Computers Won't Break All Encryption

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2024-11-05 16:00:08

Disclaimer: I’m not a cryptography expert. I’m a software engineer who builds things. What I share here comes from my personal research, not deep cryptography expertise.

Think of encryption like securing your valuables. We lock things up because we don’t want strangers looking at our personal stuff or stealing what’s important to us. Just like you wouldn’t leave your wallet on a park bench or your passport on the bus, you don’t want to leave your private information out in the open. There are two main ways we do this:

Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) turns your data into scrambled text using a secret password, and only someone with that same password can unscramble it. Think of it like a special lock on a safe - you need the exact same key to lock and unlock it.

RSA (Rivest–Shamir–Adleman) and ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography) encryption use two different keys - a public key that anyone can use to encrypt messages (like dropping mail in a mailbox), and a private key that only the owner can use to decrypt them (like having the only key to open the mailbox). This is why they’re called public-key cryptography systems.