Three weeks ago, panic swept across some corners of the security world after researchers discovered a breakthrough that, at long last, put the cracking of the widely used RSA encryption scheme within ...

Building a utility-scale quantum computer that can crack one of the most vital cryptosystems—elliptic curves—doesn’t require nearly the resources anticipated just a year or two ago, two independently ...

Building on a landmark algorithm, researchers propose a way to make a smaller and more noise-tolerant quantum factoring circuit for cryptography. The most recent email you sent was likely encrypted ...

Peter Shor didn’t set out to break the internet. But an algorithm he developed in the mid-1990s threatened to do just that. In a landmark paper, Shor showed how a hypothetical computer that exploited ...

Quantum factor: the Paul trap used by Monz and colleagues. (Courtesy: C Lackner/Quantum Optics and Spectroscopy Group, University of Innsbruck) A quantum computer made of five trapped ions has been ...

Bitcoin’s security relies on elliptic curve cryptography, a one-way mathematical function that makes deriving a private key from a public key effectively impossible for traditional computers. Shor’s ...

Quantum computers are coming. Or, at least, that’s what current predictions say. These machines harness the power of quantum mechanics, the set of rules governing how physics operates at atomic and ...