Latest news with #CraigGidney
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Nvidia can't be stopped, Apple falls behind, and the AI data center race: Tech news roundup
When Microsoft (MSFT) pulled the plug on planned data centers in Ohio last month and a Wells Fargo (WFC) report suggested Amazon (AMZN) Web Services was reconsidering some leases, market watchers quickly diagnosed the symptoms: AI bubble concerns, demand uncertainty, and the inevitable cooldown after years of breakneck expansion. Read More The 'Magnificent Seven' tech stocks led the market's post-pandemic boom. But as Big Tech sprints into the AI future, one big name is falling dangerously behind: Apple (AAPL). Once an undisputed tech heavyweight, it risks becoming the least magnificent of them all. Read More Nvidia (NVDA) continues to go beyond expectations — even if things are a little more complicated this time around. Its strong first-quarter headline numbers show that Nvidia's AI thesis is as strong as ever and that its margins remain elite, despite facing significant headwinds due to U.S. export restrictions on its H20 processors to China and other geopolitical concerns. Read More A new study from Google Researchers is raising questions about whether quantum computing will hamper your ability to keep your crypto wallet secure. Google's (GOOGL) Craig Gidney, a quantum research scientist, and Sophie Schmieg, a senior staff cryptography engineer, published a blog post on Friday showing a quantum computer could potentially break RSA encryption — the public-key encryption algorithm used to secure data such as for cryptocurrencies — with 20 times fewer quantum resources than they previously believed. Read More Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei has issued a stark warning: Artificial intelligence could eliminate up to half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, pushing U.S. unemployment to 10–20% within the next one to five years. Read More Nvidia's (NVDA) delicate dance in China continues. Amid U.S. export restrictions on its advanced AI chips, the chip giant valued at $3.3 trillion is reworking its product line — again — to maintain its hold on one of its most important markets without crossing Washington. Read More Salesforce said Tuesday it will acquire the cloud data management company Informatica for $8 billion in equity value as it seeks to further compete in the global artificial intelligence race. Read More Most companies can't shrug off an $8 billion loss. Then again, most companies aren't Nvidia (NVDA). On Wednesday's first-quarter earnings call, Wall Street zeroed in on Nvidia's obvious weak spot: China. Thanks to U.S. export restrictions, Nvidia's custom-built H20 chips, designed to skirt earlier rules, have essentially been made worthless. Nvidia CFO Colette Kress confirmed the damage: 'Had the export controls not occurred, we would have had orders of about $8 billion for H20' in the quarter. Read More Space X's big ambitions came crashing back to Earth on Tuesday, when its Starship made what the company calls a 'rapid unscheduled disassembly' six minutes after launch, with parts landing in the Indian Ocean. Read More For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Indian Express
29-05-2025
- Indian Express
Quantum computers with 1 million qubits can crack RSA encryption in a week, Google study reveals
A new study by Google has found that quantum computers could break present-day encryption standards sooner than previously thought, raising security concerns and causing unease among cryptocurrency investors. Back in 2019, researchers at Google had estimated that a quantum computer would need to be powered by 20 million qubits in order to crack the encryption standards that make WhatsApp chats secure and protect Bitcoin transactions. However, in a new paper published on May 21, the same researchers have found that the 2048-bit Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA) encryption standard could theoretically be cracked by a quantum computer with one million qubits running for one week. 'This is a 20-fold decrease in the number of qubits from our previous estimate, published in 2019,' Google researchers Craig Gidney and Sophie Schmieg wrote in a blog post on May 23. Understanding the theoretical size and performance of future quantum computers capable of breaking encryption standards could help guide the transition towards post-quantum cryptography or PQC. However, the researchers have also noted that existing quantum computers with relevant error rates are currently powered by 100 to 1,000 qubits. This suggests that building a quantum computer with one million qubits will require overcoming technical challenges and is still some years away. The codes used to encrypt data and secure messages rely on 'trapdoor' mathematical functions that work easily in one direction but are much harder to do in reverse. Hence, these functions make it easier to encrypt data, but decoding them is extremely difficult without a special key. It is practically impossible for a classical computer to factor numbers that are longer than 2048 bits. However, quantum computers can perform code-breaking calculations at a much faster rate than classical computers. In 1994, American mathematician Peter Shor came up with an algorithm which showed that a quantum computer scaled up to a certain capability can solve trapdoor functions with ease, and hence crack any system with RSA encryption. Since then, the number of qubits needed to run such a quantum computer has steadily declined, according to Google. In 2012, it was estimated that a 2048-bit RSA key could be broken by a quantum computer with a billion physical qubits. Seven years later, Google lowered that figure to 20 million physical qubits. Qubits are the building blocks of quantum computers. They serve as the basic unit of information with encoded data. Google has attributed the revision of qubit estimates to better algorithms and error correction techniques. Since physical qubits exist in multiple states, they lead to multiple outcomes. Getting the desirable outcome is a challenge as disturbances caused in any qubit can result in errors in calculations. Detecting and correcting these errors require algorithms which require extra qubits (logical qubits). Asymmetric algorithms such as RSA are used for encrypting data in transit. They form the basis of messaging services like WhatsApp. The Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman algorithm, which is also based on asymmetric cryptography, is used to secure Bitcoin transactions with public and private keys. Google said asymmetric encryption standards need to be urgently replaced with post-quantum encryption standards 'due to the fact that an adversary can collect ciphertexts, and later decrypt them once a quantum computer is available, known as a 'store now, decrypt later' attack.' Without specifically naming bitcoin or any other cryptocurrencies, Google said that signature keys need to be equipped with post-quantum cryptographic standards as they are 'harder to replace and much more attractive targets to attack, especially when compute time on a quantum computer is a limited resource.' Last year, a study by University of Kent's School of Computing found that Bitcoin would have to go offline for 300 days in order to be updated with a PQC protocol that would make the cryptocurrency immune to quantum computing-based attacks. Google said it has been working with the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and others in government, industry, and academia to develop and transition to PQC. 'NIST recently concluded a PQC competition that resulted in the first set of PQC standards. These algorithms can already be deployed to defend against quantum computers well before a working cryptographically relevant quantum computer is built,' it said.
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Google Warns Quantum Computers Could Crack Bitcoin-Like Encryption 20 Times Faster Than Expected
Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. New research by Google suggested that RSA encryption, a critical security feature used in securing Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), may be more susceptible to quantum computing attacks than previously anticipated. What Happened: Google Quantum AI researcher Craig Gidney published a new paper indicating that RSA encryption could be broken with 20 times fewer quantum resources than previously estimated. 'We published a preprint demonstrating that 2048-bit RSA encryption could theoretically be broken by a quantum computer with 1 million noisy qubits running for one week. This is a 20-fold decrease in the number of qubits from our previous estimate,' Gidney wrote in a blog post. Don't Miss: Trade crypto futures on Plus500 with up to $200 in bonuses — no wallets, just price speculation and free paper trading to practice different strategies. Grow your IRA or 401(k) with Crypto – unlock the power of alternative investments including a Crypto IRA within your retirement account. A qubit is the basic unit of information used to encode data in quantum computing, serving as the foundation upon which quantum algorithms are built. The study did not specifically mention Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. However, the Elliptic Curve Cryptography algorithm, which secures transactions on Bitcoin with public and private keys, is similar in principle to the RSA. While Elliptic Curve Cryptography is currently secure against classical computers, a strong enough quantum computer could effectively crack it in the years to come, according to a previous study. Why It Matters: Concerns over Bitcoin's cryptography have increased with the release of Google's next-generation quantum chip, "Willow,' last year. This chip can solve a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes, a task that would take the world's fastest supercomputers 10 septillions, or 10^25, years to solve. While some experts ruled out immediate dangers, others advocated for proactive measures to prepare for the threat, such as switching to quantum-resistant algorithms. A study led by the University of Kent's School of Computing suggested that Bitcoin might need to undergo a costly and time-consuming update process to counter the threat from quantum computing in the future. Read Next: New to crypto? Get up to $400 in rewards for successfully completing short educational courses and making your first qualifying trade on Coinbase. A must-have for all crypto enthusiasts: Sign up for the Gemini Credit Card today and earn rewards on Bitcoin Ether, or 60+ other tokens, with every purchase. Photo Courtesy: Wirestock Creators on Shutterstock Send To MSN: Send to MSN This article Google Warns Quantum Computers Could Crack Bitcoin-Like Encryption 20 Times Faster Than Expected originally appeared on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Quantum Computing Could Break Bitcoin-Like Encryption Far Easier Than Intially Thought, Google Researcher Says
A new research paper by Google Quantum AI researcher Craig Gidney shows that breaking widely used RSA encryption may require 20 times fewer quantum resources than previously believed. The finding did not specifically mention bitcoin BTC or other cryptocurrencies, but took aim at the encryption methods that form the technical backbone used to secure crypto wallets and, in some cases, transactions. RSA is a public-key encryption algorithm used to encrypt and decrypt data. It relies on two different but linked keys: a public key for encryption and a private key for decryption. Bitcoin doesn't use RSA, but relies on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). However, ECC can also be broken by Shor's algorithm, a quantum algorithm designed to factor large numbers or solve logarithm problems — which form the heart of public key cryptography. ECC is a way to lock and unlock digital data using mathematical calculations called curves (which compute only in one direction) instead of big numbers. Think of it as a smaller key that's just as strong as a larger one. While 256-bit ECC keys are significantly more secure than 2048-bit RSA keys, quantum threats scale nonlinearly, and research like Gidney's compresses the timeline by which such attacks become feasible. 'I estimate that a 2048-bit RSA integer could be factored in under a week by a quantum computer with fewer than one million noisy qubits,' Gidney wrote. This was a stark revision from his 2019 paper, which estimated such a feat would require 20 million qubits and take eight hours. To be clear: no such machine exists yet. IBM's most powerful quantum processor to date, Condor, clocks in at just over 1,100 qubits, and Google's Sycamore has 53. Quantum computing leverages the principles of quantum mechanics, using quantum bits or qubits instead of traditional bits. Unlike bits, which represent either a 0 or a 1, qubits can represent both 0 and 1 simultaneously due to quantum phenomena like superposition and entanglement. This allows quantum computers to perform multiple calculations at once, potentially solving problems that are currently intractable for classical computers. 'This is a 20-fold decrease in the number of qubits from our previous estimate,' Gidney said in a post.A 20x efficiency boost in quantum cost estimation for RSA may reflect algorithmic trends that could eventually apply to ECC too. RSA is still very widely used in TLS, email encryption, and certificate authorities, which are all vital to the infrastructure crypto often piggybacks on. Researchers, such as the quantum research group Project 11, are actively exploring whether even weakened versions of Bitcoin's encryption can be broken by today's quantum hardware. The group earlier this year launched a public bounty offering 1 BTC (~$85,000) to anyone able to break tiny ECC key sizes — between 1 and 25 bits — using a quantum computer. The goal isn't to break Bitcoin today, but to measure how close current systems can be.
