Wednesday, August 13, 2025

The String Theory of Security

Peter Gutmann has written a lot of excellent cryptograpy software, and is not at all worried that quantum computers will obsolete it, as you can see from his talk slides and paper.
Quantum cryptanalysis is the string theory of security

• String theory has never generated a single testable prediction

• Quantum cryptanalysis has never factored a single non-sleight- of-hand number

He argues that even a 1024-bit RSA key, which is considered obsolete, is safe in practice. A conventional supercomputer could crack it in a year, but no one would bother.

Even the Data Encryption Standard is not as bad as most people think. It was quickly realized that the key space could be expanded, with DES3 or DESX, and these are still secure for nearly all purposes.

And there has been essentially no progress in quantum computer factoring. Supposedly they can factor 15 and 21, but the quantum computers can only do one small step in these factorizations.

1 comment:

  1. Yes there is a HUGE push to transition to newfangled, untested, unproven "Quantum Ciphers". They are marketed as being a no-brainer, that there are no downsides and it just makes sense to switch to these new "stronger" algorithms" in the face of pending quantum computers. The problem is they bring lots of unknown vulnerabilities, which actually WEAKEN security. All for the purpose of hedging against POTENTIAL threats which have yet to manifest, even after 40 years of vigorous development, and which are unlikely to ever exist. To me that's not an acceptable trade off. Now add to that the fact that history is full of duplicity in the design of cryptosystems. Many times they have been made deliberately insecure with backdoors. I'm CERTAIN these "quantum ciphers" are full of vulnerabilities, and their proponents are rubbing their greedy rat claws together at the prospect of them being adopted wholesale.

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