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European MPs caution against the impending quantum computing revolution, which promises to undermine current encryption safeguards. Experts echo this urgency, warning that existing security measures for sensitive data are on borrowed time. With quantum computers inching closer to breaking mathematical keys and countries like China showing an insatiable appetite for data, the race is on to develop quantum-safe products.

The specter of quantum computing, with its potential to crack the cryptographic keys that protect everything from personal emails to state secrets, casts a long shadow over the digital world. European MPs, led by Dutch MP Bart Groothuis, have sounded a clarion call in a letter they sent to the European Commission: the cryptography underpinning our computer security systems is a ticking time bomb. This alarm is not unfounded. With quantum computings ability to process complex calculations at breakneck speeds, the security protocols we rely on today could be rendered obsolete almost overnight.

Quantum computing is set to disrupt our computing possibilities, fundamentally disrupting computation. However, quantum computing doesnt come without its own risks, as it has the potential to undermine current data encryption safeguards.

Quantum computers differ radically from todays computers. They utilize qubits, which, through superposition, can represent both one and zero simultaneously. This fundamental change in computation allows quantum computers to solve specific problemslike factoring large numbers, the basis of much of our encryptionexponentially faster than classical computers. When a quantum computer with enough stable qubits comes online, it could break the RSA-2048 encryption, a standard for securing web traffic, within a day. The more optimistic estimates give this scenario an 11 percent chance of occurring within the next five years, a figure that rises to a worrying 33 percent over the next fifteen years.

Quantum technology professor Pepijn Pinkse: The best time to get quantum security right was yesterday.

His inaugural lecture took place early last month; in practice, Pepijn Pinkse has been working as a professor of quantum technology at the University of Twente (UT) for several years. His lecture focused on creating awareness around quantum security and the threat posed by quantum technology. The best time to get quantum security right was yesterday, he said.

In a letter that underscores the gravity of the situation, MEPs laid out the stark timeline we face: switching to a new cryptographic standard could take over a decade, paralleling past transitions like the adoption of the SHA2 hashing algorithm and the AES symmetrical algorithm. The letter implores major organizations to begin preparations immediately for a complete post-quantum cryptography (PQC) transition. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States has already identified algorithms for this purpose, with choices like CRYSTALS-Kyber for public key encryption and CRYSTALS-Dilithium, FALCON, and SPHINCS+ for digital signatures.

The MEPs letter recommends that the European Commission, alongside bodies such as the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), and the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), offer clear guidance on what constitutes appropriate security measures in anticipation of quantum capabilities. The MEPs suggest this should include inventorying current algorithms, assessing new cryptographic libraries, deploying hybrid encryption systems, and beginning a phased deployment of NIST-approved standards.

Largest investment in Dutch quantum company to date

Dutch quantum company QphoX has raised a 8 million funding round in a major development for the countrys fast-growing quantum industry. It is the largest investment in a quantum company in the Netherlands to date.

Professor Pepijn Pinkse, a quantum technology expert, previouslypep warned about the risks of quantum computing security. Pinkses work underscores the fundamental shift required in our approach to cryptography. Most current cryptography relies on the difficulty of reversing the multiplication of large prime numbers. Quantum computing, particularly using the Shor algorithm, could make that reversal trivial. Pinkse and other experts indicate that Q-Daywhen current cryptographic security systems capitulate to quantum computingis less than a decade away.

Indeed, the quest to build a quantum computer is not just a scientific challengeits a geopolitical one. The past decade has seen a quadrupling in the number of companies actively developing quantum computing hardware. Investment in the field has been substantial, with multiple funding rounds in the quantum computing market exceeding $100 million between 2022 and 2024. National laboratories and supercomputing centres, often driven by government interest, are pouring resources into early-stage machines. The implications for economic and national security are profound.

It remains to be seen how the European Unions institutions and member states will react to the MEPs letter. Will they heed the warnings and start the necessary transitions to safeguard against the quantum threat? The clock is ticking, and as the MEPs letter makes clear, the time to act is nowbefore the quantum revolution undoes the digital security weve come to rely on.

Read more:
European MPs sound alarm over quantum computing's encryption threat - Innovation Origins

quantum computing

Quantum computing represents a fundamental shift from classical computing, which relies on solving problems through rapid trial and error.

WASHINGTON, March 16, 2024 While quantum computing holds the promise of solving complex problems exponentially faster than current supercomputers, it raises significant challenges for cybersecurity, a panel of experts said during Wednesdays Broadband Breakfast Live Online session.

Quantum computing represents a fundamental shift from classical computing, which relies on solving problems through rapid trial and error, said Ryan Lafler, president and chief technology officer of Quantum Corridor, a research group.

Broadband Breakfast on March 13, 2024 Quantum Computing and Broadband

Quantum computing could be a harbinger of change for future broadband networks

"Quantum compute is the ability to transmit all states of information, all states of bandwidth at the same time, rather than through rapid trial and error, one at a time," Lafler said.

Operating on principles of entanglement and superposition, quantum mechanics enables particles to exist in multiple states or positions simultaneously.

The transition to quantum computing raises significant challenges in that traditional encryption methods may become vulnerable to quantum attacks, necessitating the development of quantum-resistant algorithms. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is leading efforts to standardize these new cryptographic techniques, with the first set of candidates released for public review, said Lafter.

Gary Bolton, CEO of the Fiber Broadband Association, emphasized the importance of fiber optic networks in enabling the quantum future.

"If your community doesn't have fiber, you will be left behind," Bolton said. "You will be in the dark ages forever because you cannot upgrade from a LEO satellite to fiber to the home without building out all the infrastructure."

Fiber networks are crucial for enabling low-latency, high-capacity quantum communications, which are essential for the practical deployment of quantum computing, he said.

Vaibhav Garg, executive director of cybersecurity and privacy research at Comcast, highlighted the potential for quantum computing to solve complex problems in fields such as pharmaceutical development and battery technology.

He also noted the challenges in developing quantum-resistant cryptography to protect against the threat of quantum computers being used to break current encryption methods.

Broadband Breakfast on March 13, 2024 Quantum Computing and Broadband

Quantum computing could be a harbinger of change for future broadband networks

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Quantum Computing and Networking Poised to Revolutionize Cryptography - BroadbandBreakfast.com

There are growing concerns about quantum computers eventual ability to circumvent commonly used encryption. That could still be decades away, but 20 Members of the European Parliament, led by Dutch MEP Bart Groothuis, want organizations to start preparing themselves. The Dutch intelligence service AIVD shares the concerns, NOS reports.

Cryptographic keys are currently the most used way to prevent unauthorized persons from reading communications, from sensitive communications between governments to text messages on WhatsApp. The encryption mathematically scrambles the data. Regular computers cannot crack that key in practice because the number of possible mathematical combinations is so high. But there are growing fears that quantum computers, which work fundamentally differently, will eventually be able to do that.

Quantum computing has not reached that point yet, and Q-Day may still be decades away. But governments and critical organizations must already start protecting themselves. We see an enormous hunger for data in countries like China, the AIVD told the broadcaster. These countries are already intercepting data in the hope that theyll be able to crack the encryption at some point. It is, therefore, important that organizations whose data will still be sensitive in a few decades time to already implement quantum-safe protection. Software developers need to work on that urgently, the AVID said.

We must start this now, MEP Groothuis told the broadcaster. He initiated a public letter by 20 MEPs calling on governments and organizations to implement other ways to protect their data. We cannot take that risk. The most important organizations must start doing this now.

Switching to other algorithms that are more resistant to quantum computers will be a complicated process because both the sender and receiver must use the same technology. With a banking website, for example, both the banks web server and the web browser must support the same new technology.

Link:
Growing concenrs about quantum computers' ability to break commonly used encryption - NL Times

This extreme fragility might make quantum computing sound hopeless. But in 1995, the applied mathematician Peter Shor discovered a clever way to store quantum information. His encoding had two key properties. First, it could tolerate errors that only affected individual qubits. Second, it came with a procedure for correcting errors as they occurred, preventing them from piling up and derailing a computation. Shors discovery was the first example of a quantum error-correcting code, and its two key properties are the defining features of all such codes.

The first property stems from a simple principle: Secret information is less vulnerable when its divided up. Spy networks employ a similar strategy. Each spy knows very little about the network as a whole, so the organization remains safe even if any individual is captured. But quantum error-correcting codes take this logic to the extreme. In a quantum spy network, no single spy would know anything at all, yet together theyd know a lot.

Each quantum error-correcting code is a specific recipe for distributing quantum information across many qubits in a collective superposition state. This procedure effectively transforms a cluster of physical qubits into a single virtual qubit. Repeat the process many times with a large array of qubits, and youll get many virtual qubits that you can use to perform computations.

The physical qubits that make up each virtual qubit are like those oblivious quantum spies. Measure any one of them and youll learn nothing about the state of the virtual qubit its a part ofa property called local indistinguishability. Since each physical qubit encodes no information, errors in single qubits wont ruin a computation. The information that matters is somehow everywhere, yet nowhere in particular.

You cant pin it down to any individual qubit, Cubitt said.

All quantum error-correcting codes can absorb at least one error without any effect on the encoded information, but they will all eventually succumb as errors accumulate. Thats where the second property of quantum error-correcting codes kicks inthe actual error correction. This is closely related to local indistinguishability: Because errors in individual qubits dont destroy any information, its always possible to reverse any error using established procedures specific to each code.

Zhi Li, a postdoc at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, was well versed in the theory of quantum error correction. But the subject was far from his mind when he struck up a conversation with his colleague Latham Boyle. It was the fall of 2022, and the two physicists were on an evening shuttle from Waterloo to Toronto. Boyle, an expert in aperiodic tilings who lived in Toronto at the time and is now at the University of Edinburgh, was a familiar face on those shuttle rides, which often got stuck in heavy traffic.

Normally they could be very miserable, Boyle said. This was like the greatest one of all time.

Before that fateful evening, Li and Boyle knew of each others work, but their research areas didnt directly overlap, and theyd never had a one-on-one conversation. But like countless researchers in unrelated fields, Li was curious about aperiodic tilings. Its very hard to be not interested, he said.

The rest is here:
Never-Repeating Patterns of Tiles Can Safeguard Quantum Information - WIRED

Tokyo, March 15, 2024

A Japanese consortium of research partners including RIKEN, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Osaka University, Fujitsu Limited, and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) have been recognized with the prestigious Prime Ministers Award as part of the 53rd Japan Industrial Technology Awards for the successful development of a high-performance computing platform that leverages Japan's second domestically-made superconducting quantum computer.

The platform leverages Japan's second domestically-made 64-qubit superconducting quantum computer, which has been offered on the cloud since October 2023 to promote its use for commercial industrial research and development, and jointly developed by Fujitsu and RIKEN based on the know-how for the development of the first domestically-made 64-qubit superconducting quantum computer released in March 2023 by the joint research group.

The research group offered Japan's first superconducting quantum computer under a joint research agreement for non-commercial use for the purpose of promoting and developing research and development in quantum computation and other fields. RIKEN and Fujitsu also unveiled Japan's second superconducting quantum computer, based on the technology of the first superconducting quantum computer, on the cloud for industrial research and development in 2021, two and a half years after they established the RIKEN RQC-Fujitsu Collaboration Center.

These milestones highlight the rapid progress and innovative potential of Japans original quantum technologies, which are now demonstrating the ability to withstand the demands of the first stages of industrial application. One particularly promising technology is the superconducting quantum bit chip design proposed by RIKEN, which uses a unique three-dimensional mounting layout with scalability that can support expansion to the 1,000-qubit level.

RIKEN and Fujitsus superconducting quantum computer is provided as part of a hybrid quantum computing platform that also supports Fujitsu's 40-qubit quantum simulator, which remains one of the largest scale simulators in the world (1). This platform implements a scalable cloud architecture that allows seamless operation of both quantum computers and quantum simulators to promote and accelerate adoption and collaboration between various companies.

The platform was highly praised at the 53rd Japan Industrial Technology Awards for its technological capabilities (originality and advancement), and for marking an important step toward the industrial use of quantum computers based on Japan's unique quantum technology, and for its connection to efforts to expand the search for practical applications for quantum technology in various fields such as materials, finance, and drug discovery by providing a combination of quantum computing and quantum simulators to companies to engage in joint research projects. In the future, the platform is anticipated to stimulate further research and development of quantum applications and accelerate the practical application of quantum computing technologies for both hardware and software, offering access to companies engaged in research in various fields.

The joint research group will continue to promote the social implementation of quantum computing by leveraging the strengths of each organization.

The Japan Industrial Technology Awards, sponsored by the Nikkan Kogyo Shinbun newspaper, honors companies and organizations that have contributed to industry and society over the year through the development and practical application of innovative large-scale industrial equipment and structures, and cutting-edge technology. It was established in 1972 to celebrate achievements that have contributed to the development of society and to encourage technological development. This marks the 53rd time that the award has been given to recognize achievements that bring together comprehensive technology, an increasingly relevant distinction for today's era of industrial sophistication and systemized technology.

This work was supported by Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technologys Quantum Leap Flagship Program (MEXT Q-LEAP) "Research and Development of Superconducting Quantum Computers (Team Leader: Yasunobu Nakamura; Grant No. JPMXS 0118068682)

Fujitsus purpose is to make the world more sustainable by building trust in society through innovation. As the digital transformation partner of choice for customers in over 100 countries, our 124,000 employees work to resolve some of the greatest challenges facing humanity. Our range of services and solutions draw on five key technologies: Computing, Networks, AI, Data & Security, and Converging Technologies, which we bring together to deliver sustainability transformation. Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenues of 3.7 trillion yen (US$28 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2023 and remains the top digital services company in Japan by market share. Find out more: http://www.fujitsu.com.

RIKEN is Japan's largest comprehensive research institution renowned for high-quality research in a diverse range of scientific disciplines. Founded in 1917 as a private research foundation in Tokyo, RIKEN has grown rapidly in size and scope, today encompassing a network of world-class research centers and institutes across Japan. https://www.riken.jp/en/about/

AIST, one of the largest public research organizations in Japan, focuses on the creation and practical realization of technologies useful to Japanese industry and society, and on bridging the gap between innovative technological seeds and commercialization. AIST, as a core and pioneering existence of the national innovation system, has about 2300 researchers doing research and development at 12 research bases across the country, based on the national strategies formulated bearing in mind the changing environment regarding innovation. https://www.aist.go.jp/index_en.html

As Japans sole National Research and Development Agency specializing in the field of information and communications technology, NICT is charged with promoting ICT sector as well as research and development in ICT, which drives economic growth and creates an affluent, safe and secure society. For more information, please visit https://www.nict.go.jp/en/.

Osaka University was founded in 1931 as one of the seven imperial universities of Japan and is now one of Japan's leading comprehensive universities with a broad disciplinary spectrum. This strength is coupled with a singular drive for innovation that extends throughout the scientific process, from fundamental research to the creation of applied technology with positive economic impacts. Its commitment to innovation has been recognized in Japan and around the world, being named Japan's most innovative university in 2015 (Reuters 2015 Top 100) and one of the most innovative institutions in the world in 2017 (Innovative Universities and the Nature Index Innovation 2017). Now, Osaka University is leveraging its role as a Designated National University Corporation selected by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology to contribute to innovation for human welfare, sustainable development of society, and social transformation. Website: https://resou.osaka-u.ac.jp/en

NTT believes in resolving societal issues through our business operations by applying technology for good. We help clients accelerate growth and innovate for current and new business models. Our services include digital business consulting, technology and managed services for cybersecurity, applications, workplace, cloud, datacenter and networks all supported by our deep industry expertise and innovation. As a top 5 global technology and business solutions provider, our diverse teams operate in 80+ countries and regions and deliver services to over 190 of them. We serve over 80% of Fortune Global 100 companies and thousands of other clients and communities around the world. For more information on NTT, visit http://www.global.ntt/.

Fujitsu Limited Public and Investor Relations Division Inquiries

RIKEN RIKEN Global Communications Phone: +81-(0)48-462-1225 E-mail: pr@riken.jp

National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) Media Relations Office, Branding and Public Relations Department E-mail: hodo-ml@aist.go.jp

National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) Press Office, Public Relations Department E-mail: publicity@nict.go.jp

Osaka University Dr. Makoto Negoro (Associate Professor, Vice Director of the Center for Quantum Information and Quantum Biology at Osaka University) E-mail: negoro.sec@qiqb.osaka-u.ac.jp

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) NTT Service Innovation Laboratory Group Public Relations E-mail: nttrd-pr@ml.ntt.com

All company or product names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Information provided in this press release is accurate at time of publication and is subject to change without advance notice.

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Japanese joint research group win Prime Minister's Award with ultra high-performance computing platform using jointly ... - Fujitsu