[Cryptography] Why Quantum Cryptanalysis is Bollocks

[Phillip Hallam-Baker]

On Fri, Aug 2, 2024 at 4:49 AM Peter Gutmann <pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz>
wrote:

> I've just posted the draft slides for a talk with the above title, which
> also
> happens to perfectly summarise its contents, to:
>
> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/bollocks.pdf
>
> I'd be interested in any comments/feedback/whatever people might have on
> this.
>

Seems like you are overstating the case.

Having studied high energy physics, I know a physics experiment when I see
one and all quantum computers are physics experiments. Anyone betting on
them working is likely to lose their money.

I estimate there to be at least a 1% chance that someone will build a CRQC
within a decade, it is highly unlikely to be much more and I suspect the
same will be true in ten years time. The problem being that there will
(probably) never be a point where the chance goes down.

The notion that you can stack quantum states infinitely is not proven by
experiment and there is a good reason to suspect you can't - the states
collapse. What if the probability of collapse increases with the number of
stacked states?


That said, the consequence of being bitten by that 1% is eschaton level. So
we have to take it seriously
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