Three years is therefore a very short timeframe for an ecosystem that took seven years to turn Ethereum over to a proof-of-stake system (that is, coin staking enables transaction validation) instead of proof-of-work (miners validate transactions).
Rubbing salt on the wound, Bitcoin in particular is technologically ancient by today's standards. Its original design was indeed resistant to attack and did get some upgrades along the way, but many participants see the continuation of mining and the slow evolution of the platform as a feature rather than a bug. That may well be the network's undoing.
Blockchains aren't the only applications at risk, either. Applications like website key exchange, SSH, messaging applications are transitioning away from ECC to PQC, plus any attack still requires capturing the encrypted data to begin with. X.509 certificates, used for server authentication, are a tough nut to crack, since moving to PQC requires coordination from certificate issuers, root certification authorities, and browsers. Code signing is another pain point, with the technology available but not truly implemented at scale yet .
As ever in the cybersecurity world, legacy gear is particularly at risk. At some point, its encryption will be easily broken, plus any captured traffic from now-legacy hardware and applications will be ripe for slicing open. This is yet another reason why it's critical to keep computing gear updated, particularly but not only networking-related hardware and software.
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Bruno Ferreira is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has decades of experience with PC hardware and assorted sundries, alongside a career as a developer. He's obsessed with detail and has a tendency to ramble on the topics he loves. When not doing that, he's usually playing games, or at live music shows and festivals. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-19/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Bruno Ferreira Social Links Navigation Contributor Bruno Ferreira is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has decades of experience with PC hardware and assorted sundries, alongside a career as a developer. He's obsessed with detail and has a tendency to ramble on the topics he loves. When not doing that, he's usually playing games, or at live music shows and festivals.
Zaranthos Cryptocurrency was always a bad idea. Lets use vast amounts of compute that require vast amounts of finite energy supply to create fake money with no real value. Years of higher hardware costs, higher energy costs that disproportionately impact the poorest people the worst, with one of the most oppressive governments in the world stealing nearly 7 billion in crypto hacking alone. Despite the hype about it being secure, convenient, anonymous, blah, blah, it was all just a terrible idea in my opinion. Reply
jp7189 The theory is alarming, but id like to think the practice is less so. Anyone that can put hands on a quantum computer of this magnitude has an incentive to maintain economic stability. Random destruco hackers arent going to have one of these running in their basement for a long while yet. Reply
usertests jp7189 said: The theory is alarming, but id like to think the practice is less so. Anyone that can put hands on a quantum computer of this magnitude has an incentive to maintain economic stability. Random destruco hackers arent going to have one of these running in their basement for a long while yet. Either way, we're getting strong hints that a lot of encryption will be toast soon. Reply
anoldnewb Zaranthos said: Cryptocurrency was always a bad idea. Lets use vast amounts of compute that require vast amounts of finite energy supply to create fake money with no real value. Years of higher hardware costs, higher energy costs that disproportionately impact the poorest people the worst, with one of the most oppressive governments in the world stealing nearly 7 billion in crypto hacking alone. Despite the hype about it being secure, convenient, anonymous, blah, blah, it was all just a terrible idea in my opinion. Vast energy use is only tied to proof-of-work systems like bitcoin where miners validate transactions and are awarded new coins. The mining calculations keep getting more compute intensive to restrict the issuance of new coins. proof-of-stake systems (that is, coin staking enables transaction validation) like Ethereum do not require such energy intensive calculations to verify transactions . Speculation on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency which causes unstable values is a whole other issue. Reply
anoldnewb jp7189 said: The theory is alarming, but id like to think the practice is less so. Anyone that can put hands on a quantum computer of this magnitude has an incentive to maintain economic stability. Random destruco hackers arent going to have one of these running in their basement for a long while yet. Yes this will require state level hackers, for example Russia, China, or North Korea. The rewards are huge, trillions of dollars of crypto, stealing defense technology or breaking into finance systems. It may take them a several more years access leading edge hardware, but the return is almost limitless. Reply
Blastomonas I would imagine that Crypto investors will remove their fortunes when the time is near and then crypto will be over. Assuming that they dont upgrade the encryption in the next couple of years of course.. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cyber-security/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cyber-security/google-research-suggests-encryption-technique-used-by-bitcoin-will-be-cracked-by-quantum-computers-around-2029-search-giant-says-quantum-attacks-need-to-be-prepared-for-now#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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