I found this video to be quite interesting, I had some rudimentary understanding of how encryption worked, now it's slightly less rudimentary. Anyway, I found this video to be interesting, so I'm going to go watch the rest of it(Links in the description on YT).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulg_AHBOIQU
I love numberphile for these explanations on things.
I'm sure the advancement of quantum computers will spice things up because they do math backwards, maybe potentially making encrption a thing of the past because they're made to crunch prime numbers.
So far the record calculation on one is like 15=3*5 49% of the time. optimum being 50% because it could be 15=3*5 or 15=5*3
i doubt that quantum computers will play a big role in en/de-cryption in the next 20-30 years since they need to be cooled to ridiculously low temperatures to work, which rules out mass-production. The best one that i know off, has only 512qbits, which shows that this technology is in its infancy.
Regular binary processors might out-pace quantum processors in cost efficiency for a very very long time if somebody figures out how to grow ICs in graphene.
But when quantum-computing becomes viable, what would stop you from using it for encryption, i think that everybody is going to want a quantum-co-processor, since these things will enable ridiculous ray-tracing.
IMHO i think that encryption will always checkmate decryption efforts because of math(s)
I agree with the time factor. It's a very new technology we hardly understand. We have seen Qcomps that don't 'need' to be cooled so there's that: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/07/quantum-computing-no-cooling-required/ (many more acticle if you google it)
as for cost? If this is used by the govt money is no object, lol you know this. google even recently bought a Qcomp to play with. then again that's google we're talking about lol
I think that cracking will always checkmate encryption because every single week it seems there is a big break somewhere.
no encryption has been cracked, the implementations were compromised, those are two very different things. there is mathematical proof for the ratios of effort between encryption and decryption. And believe me no government has enough money to bride that gap, not even close.
Besides not every kind of encryption is susceptible to quantum computers, if i'm not mistaken symmetric encryption is such a candidate.
Make no mistake the war between encryption and decryption was decided a long time ago & encryption won a landslide victory.
The current news are reporting that the NSA has found security holes in bad software, and they managed to trick us into using bad randomizers & and insecure curves, they also managed sneak in a few backdoors here and there. You know run of the mile cloak & dagger stuff
They took advantage of "our" complacency & lack of skepticism, but that is over now:
the first implementations for using GPUs and OpenCl for encryption are cropping up, When those monsters have matured it's all over again for few decades.
The only chance the NSA has is to use hacker tactics, to get their hands on our keys, because decrypting the worlds communications by brute force is mathematically disproved, the economical disadvantage has so many orders of magnitude it'l make your head spin.
When I was reading that article about that quantum computing i was just like http://imgur.com/j74SykU