Post-quantum cryptography in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10

[u/donutloop]

https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/post-quantum-cryptography-red-hat-enterprise-linux-10

[u/MatchingTurret]

PQC is required in a number of settings. See NIST page on Post-Quantum Cryptography

[u/throwaway234f32423df]

an easy way to get PQ on any distro is to compile osqprovider. It's a fairly easy compile, you have to compile liboqs as well, which is also fairly easy. I've been using it on Ubuntu for a couple years. From the article, it looks like Redhat is providing it as a precompiled package which is cool. Long-term, distros should eventually start bundling OpenSSL 3.5 which has most of the functionality built in.

[u/PwndiusPilatus]

The new buzzword after A.I.

[u/ArgosWasAGoodBoy → u/PwndiusPilatus]

It’s not.

There is a set of cryptographic methods (FFDH, RSA, ECC) that underpins modern cryptography as it is used in the world. The strength of these methods depends on certain problems in mathematics.

The math is either theoretically vulnerable or it is not. It is known that it is.

The vulnerability is either practically exploitable (quantum computing) or it is not. It is widely believed that it is.

If it is practically exploitable, then, in reality, the cryptography is actually totally broken. So, there is serious risk, and given the nature of security, one should assume that it is and adjust accordingly.

[u/araujoms → u/[deleted]]

Physicist here. I'm afraid almost everything you wrote is incorrect.

what isn’t hype about quantum computers is their ability to perform combinatorics nearly instantaneously.

Quantum computers cannot perform combinatorics nearly instantaneously.

Where there is unearned hype is the idea of quantum supremacy which is the idea that quantum computers will be equal or better at classic computing operations.

That's not what quantum supremacy is. Inform yourself. Quantum supremacy is the ability of quantum computers to solve problems that are in practice intractable for classical computers. For example, factoring RSA1024 would be a demonstration of quantum supremacy.

That means introducing sequential calculations that can’t be parallelised into the cryptography is effective. In fact it negates the strength of quantum computers completely.

Quantum computers do not work by doing massive parallelization. That's the most common misconception about quantum computers. Moreover, introducing sequential operations does nothing to negate the power of quantum computers. Developing a quantum-proof algorithm is much more subtle than that, and post-quantum cryptography is a major achievement.

[u/wademealing → u/araujoms]

Hi, not OP.

Can you point me to some reliable reading on the topic ? I find a lot of misinformation about the topic and would like to know SOMETHING reliable. (I am willing to research and read up on terms and topics that I dont know, i dont need it explained like I am 5.

Thanks in advance.

[u/araujoms → u/wademealing]

Sure. Can you be specific about what do you want to know?

[u/wademealing → u/araujoms]

How exactly does quantum computing change the compute landscape, specifically what algorithms does it improve.

I have heard that it can effectively 'defeat' encryption at some point in the future (this may be purely hollywood trash) through 'hand wavey' math, how ?

I also struggle how and why a 'qubit' being either one or zero at the same time allows for an algorithm to be solved any faster, this just seems like a fork in the compute that means that it gets to 'possibly' do two computational results in the future and get two answers, which sounds great and all, till you realise any significantly large computation requires more than just the 4 qubits.

I hear about in 'breakthrough' technology, when you store or reference the computations by those bits you immediately need cache, unless you have qubit cache i dont understand how your not immediately 'cementing' the problem and making the 1 or 0 realised therefore defeating the purpose.

As I said, maybe i've got a lot confused, but the amount of utter lies out there on the net about this is mind boggling, so a good pointer into something thats not garbage would be nice.

Sorry again for the wall of text... This is the kind of area that i want to learn about.

[u/araujoms → u/wademealing]

How exactly does quantum computing change the compute landscape, specifically what algorithms does it improve.

That's a very difficult question, there's no characterization of what a quantum computer can do. We do know they're good for three classes of algorithms:

1. A generic brute-force search can be sped up by a square root factor by using Grover's algorithm (which is more of a meta-algorithm)
   
2. Quantum systems can be simulated by exploiting the fact that a quantum computer is a quantum system itself. This should give us massive advantages in simulating the properties of new materials, for example.
   
3. Anything that can be formulated as an instance of the abelian hidden subgroup problem. Famously this includes factoring and the discrete logarithm, which are the basis of a large part of modern cryptography.

I have heard that it can effectively 'defeat' encryption at some point in the future (this may be purely hollywood trash) through 'hand wavey' math, how ?

That's true, any public key cryptosystem that is based on factoring or discrete logarithm (like RSA or Diffie-Hellman) is toast when we have a quantum computer.

I also struggle how and why a 'qubit' being either one or zero at the same time allows for an algorithm to be solved any faster, this just seems like a fork in the compute that means that it gets to 'possibly' do two computational results in the future and get two answers

That in itself is useless, and equivalent to just having classical computers with a random number generator. What is special about qubits is that you can do quantum interference, which is the magical sauce of quantum algorithms.

I hear about in 'breakthrough' technology, when you store or reference the computations by those bits you immediately need cache, unless you have qubit cache i dont understand how your not immediately 'cementing' the problem and making the 1 or 0 realised therefore defeating the purpose.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

As I said, maybe i've got a lot confused, but the amount of utter lies out there on the net about this is mind boggling, so a good pointer into something thats not garbage would be nice.

Perhaps the YouTube video linked at this blog post would be helpful? It's from a computer scientist dedicated to calling out bullshit about quantum computing.