You don't have to worry about your online data being hacked by quantum computers just yet.
Your encryption is not quantum safe
Fujitsu reported that a new study of its quantum simulator shows that quantum computers will have a hard time cracking standard security for years to come. Experts agree that your personal information is not immediately at risk, but the threat of hacking is real, especially for national security secrets.
“With storage and processing power costs continuing to plummet and China and the United States investing massive amounts of money into quantum encryption and decryption, the future of the quantum threat will likely arrive sooner than we think,” Bryan Cunningham, an advisory board member at cybersecurity firm Theon Technology, told Lifewire in an email interview.
Fujitsu last month ran tests with its 39-qubit quantum simulator to assess how difficult it would be for quantum computers to crack existing RSA cryptography, the default security for most users. Researchers at the company discovered a fault-tolerant quantum computer. They said a computer with a scale of 10,000 qubits and 2.23 trillion quantum gates would be needed to crack RSA. They estimated that it would take about 104 days of quantum computation to crack RSA.
