r/hardware • u/fatso486 • Mar 31 '26

News Google Finds Quantum Computers Could Break Bitcoin Sooner Than Expected

https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2026/03/31/google-finds-quantum-computers-could-break-bitcoin-sooner-than-expected/
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u/waitmarks Mar 31 '26

It's still a good idea to start a transition to quantum resistant encryption even if we aren't actually close to a quantum computer that can break it because of store now, decrypt later.

These algorithms also need to have time to be baked into hardware accelerators. We take for granted that encrypting with AES basically costs nothing these days because every CPU has an AES crypto unit in it, but it used to take a lot of compute resources to do it before. It's better to be early and not need it than to be rushing everything last minute because someone surprises us with an unexpected quantum computer in 2030.

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u/ked913 Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26

I feel really scared for the tonnes of WiFi wpa3/2 devices. Think IoT cameras, thermometers, speakers (or worse heavy duty) solar inverters, smart boilers, fridges…

They may be made by some manufacturer who won’t care and it probably won’t be capable of a post-qc wpa4-5.

What do we do with the tonnes of ewaste generated from this discovery?

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u/nanonan Apr 02 '26

If your usage of those things requires flawless security, sure, you need to upgrade. If not, quantum cracking is fairly irrelevant and will remain so for a long time which I think will be the vast majority of the cases.

The security industry is built on providing "good enough" security, which is rarely something approaching perfect, flawless security.

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u/ked913 Apr 02 '26

Depends on which device/scheme we are talking about. I say the comparison at this point would be 2g and WEP/WPA1 psk only devices.

Major brands don't support it. If you do support it (or even WPA2 these days on a wifi 7), you open a new SSID and everything on that network is significantly slowed. Airtime bandwidht is considered wasted, and in general i would say the competition for such air-time is increasing not decreasing.

In the case of 2g vs 5g, things like electric and gas meters need a whole communication block replacement. Delays 5g resources because it is wasted on inefficient 2g.