Since the early days of Bitcoin, many users have wondered what will become of the network in the age of quantum computers.
Late last week, a scientific paper had a bombshell effect on the Bitcoin world. Thus, a group of Chinese researchers has published a study that would show that it is possible to break the RSA-2048 encryption algorithm.
RSA-2048 Broken by Chinese Researchers?
The news about the abovementioned research study could impact many other areas. For example, credit cards are protected by the RSA-1024 and RSA-2048 algorithms.
Obviously, this is not available to everyone. In fact, this study focuses on the use of quantum computing to crack this algorithm.
As a reminder, classical computing uses the concept of a bit whose value can be 0 or 1. For its part, quantum computing is based on a qubit concept that represents the coherent superposition of at least two quantum ground states.
After theorizing the attack vector, the Chinese team used their own algorithm to factor a 48-bit number into a quantum computer made up of 10 qubits.
To really compromise the RSA-2048 algorithm, a much more powerful quantum computer would be required. According to the estimates proposed by the report, it would take a quantum computer with 372 qubits to crack RSA-2048.
For comparison, the most powerful quantum computer in existence is the IBM Osprey, which has 433 qubits.
Is Bitcoin in Danger?
Many experts carefully combed the post back and forth for errors or inaccuracies, and have declared themselves skeptical of what was announced in the publication. In fact, the algorithm used by Chinese researchers to corrupt RSA-2048 comes from another highly controversial scientific publication, as Bruce Schneier explains:
“If it’s true that Chinese paper depends on this Schnorr technique that doesn’t scale, the techniques of this Chinese paper won’t scale either.”
Thus, the algorithm is based on the report by Claus Schnorr. Although it claims “to be able to destroy the RSA encryption system,” it is restricted to small orders of magnitude. In fact, this algorithm stops working as the order of magnitude increases.
As a result, the algorithm works based on the factorization of a 48-bit number as presented in the Chinese study, but this does not allow processing orders of magnitude on the order of those used by RSA -1024 or 2048.
In other words, RSA algorithms still have a bright future ahead of them before they break. On its side, Bitcoin is based on an ECDSA encryption that is comparable in complexity to RSA-3072. Therefore, the banking industry will be in trouble long before Bitcoin is corrupted.
While they hope to break Bitcoin’s encryption, hackers have other playing fields. In fact, in 2022, more than 3 billion dollars have been stolen from the crypto ecosystem.
By Audy Castaneda
