https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/26/quantum_breaking_encryption_rs
a/?td=rt-9cp

RSA's Adi Shamir thinks we're safe for a generation, but more gnarly
keys are still a good idea
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RSA Conference Adi Shamir, the cryptographer whose surname is the "S"
in "RSA", thinks folks need to stop worrying about quantum computing
breaking encryption algorithms.

Speaking on the annual cryptographers' panel at the RSA Conference in
San Francisco this week, he opined that in the 1990s he saw three big
issues appear on the security industry's radar: AI, cryptography, and
quantum computing. Two out of three had delivered, he said, and
quantum computing has yet to show promise and won't for decades to
come.

99 percent of encrypted messages are junk, he opined. Requests for
lunch meetings or banal chat; waste of time to decrypt, and there's
so much of it.

The idea that such missives would be a top cracking priority isn't
realistic, he reminded the audience. And while important messages
might be decoded decades on, the signal-to-noise ratio is going to
make throwing a quantum machine at the job a poor way to find real
secrets.

He wasn't alone in his skepticism. British mathematician Cliff Cocks,
who developed public-key cryptography years before session host Dr
Whitfield Diffie and his colleagues came up with the same idea, was
somewhat cutting about stories that the Chinese have developed
quantum systems to crack current encryption systems.

The Chinese system may work well on very small data sets, he opined,
but there's "no evidence whatsoever" that it would work on a larger
scale. That said, Anne Dames, IBM zSystems Distinguished Engineer and
Cryptographic Technology Architect, argued China's efforts are as
good a reason as any to update your public-private keys just to be on
the safe side. The longer and more secure the keys the better she
opined. There's no harm in using quantum-resistant algorithms,
either, we note.
rsa

The RSA cryptographer's panel in San Francisco today

"Quantum computers, even if they don't exist today, will do in the
next 30-40 years, so we will need to switch keys," she advised,
saying the current concerns over quantum cryptography reminded her a
lot of blockchain hype.

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That said, all the encryption in the world isn't going to help you
defend against insider threats. It's been ten years since an IT
contractor called Edward Snowden managed to walk off with the NSA's
crown jewels, and the latest Pentagon leak is alleged to have
involved a guy showing off classified information on Discord to
impress friends. This showed the systems we use are still critically
weak, Diffie argued.

Shamir argued Snowden was a short-term and long-term disaster for the
NSA, and diminished America's influence by exposing directly long-
suspected practices - such as the presence of backdoors in commercial
products - for which no evidence had previously been available.
Quantum computers breaking encryption could deliver similar
revelations, Shamir opined, but it's a way off doing so.