Your Private Crypto Keys Safe, For Now

Quantum Computers are the way of the future and all encryption, especially that underlying cryptocurrency, is not safe. So what about private crypto keys?

Researchers from the National University of Singapore have come close to their conclusions as to when these computers, may be able to break Bitcoin’s security. Their papers presented the most rigorous estimation as to the progress of quantum computation, saying that these keys could be cracked by 2027.

What makes these quantum computer stand out is that they are faster and not forced to work with bits (values that are either 1 or 0); because they’re qubits that take advantage of the very unfamiliar ways that subatomic particles function. They can contain two or more values at one.

MIT first reported the research which investigated these computers against private keys and mining pools. The conclusion was that miners will be safer longer than wallets will.

Rewrites
According to the paper, the greatest crisis Bitcoin users may face is when transactions are broadcasted to the entire network but not processed. A hacker with a quantum computer will be able to alter the transaction before the authentic one is able to go through.

The settled transaction will continue to remain safe, in the beginning. Even the most powerful computer is highly unlikely to be able to change the full ledger when several blocks have been confirmed.

If private keys in cryptocurrency are compromised it can be very bad for a wide variety of different things. It would endanger anything else that uses public-private key encryption like data storage, SSL certificated and messaging applications.

Glimmer of hope
As the research concludes, it only holds true if there is no change to the way that the private keys are created.

They state:

“Many presumably quantum-safe public-key signature schemes have been proposed in the literature.”

However, they don’t take any form of a stance on a particular proposal. Also, it has been argued how quickly these quantum computers will actually be developed.