With her team of mathematicians at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, Chen reached out to academic and industry cryptographers aro

The race is on for quantum-safe cryptography

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2021-06-12 17:30:02

With her team of mathematicians at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, Chen reached out to academic and industry cryptographers around the world to find algorithms that could resist new threats posed by quantum computers. Five years later, the project is almost complete. After three rounds of elimination, Chen and her team have now narrowed the 69 submissions down to a final seven algorithms, with several winners to be named at the end of the year. If things go according to plan, the result will be a new set of NIST-certified algorithms — and a new measure of protection against the chaos of a fully operational quantum computer.

“Cryptosystems in devices and communication systems will not be secure anymore” when those computers reach their potential, Chen says. “It’s time to prepare for quantum threats.”

Chen has technical reasons to be concerned. Existing encryption systems rely on specific mathematical equations that classical computers aren’t very good at solving — but quantum computers may breeze through them. As a security researcher, Chen is particularly interested in quantum computing’s ability to solve two types of math problems: factoring large numbers and solving discrete logarithms (essentially solving the problem bx = a for x). Pretty much all internet security relies on this math to encrypt information or authenticate users in protocols such as Transport Layer Security. These math problems are simple to perform in one direction, but difficult in reverse, and thus ideal for a cryptographic scheme.