Google鈥檚 claims of quantum supremacy have some people worried that the internet is now broken. Within hours of the news breaking, US presidential candidate Andrew Yang tweeted that 鈥淚t means, among many other things, that no code is uncrackable.鈥�
But Yang isn鈥檛 quite right. Although there is reason to believe that quantum computers will pose a risk to encryption, there is still a long way to go before that happens.
The internet uses encryption to ensure that sensitive data, such as bank details or private messages, can鈥檛 be read by prying eyes. The process involves mathematically jumbling up data before it is transmitted and then deciphering it once it is received 鈥� a process vulnerable to quantum computers.
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RSA cryptography, which is used all over the internet, relies on the fact that it is very difficult to find the prime numbers that multiply together to make up a large number. Because of how they work, quantum computers can do this much faster than classical ones.
It could take current classical computers to factor numbers that are 2048 bits 鈥� 617 decimal digits 鈥� or longer. But using an algorithm developed by US computer scientist Peter Shor in 1994, it would take a quantum computer , by one estimate. However, the machine would need 20 million qubits to achieve this.
Google鈥檚 quantum computer only had about 50 qubits, so such a device is a long way off. Attempts are already under way to find encryption methods that are safe from quantum computers. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology, for example, has a competition that is currently testing our best approaches.
