The security of today’s public key encryption is based on the fact that huge computational resources are required to solve factoring problems, especially for large integers, says NTT Research CEO, Kazuhiro (Kazu) Gomi. This may no longer be true in the years ahead, he warns. “Shor’s algorithm, running on a scalable quantum computer, will change this environment entirely,” Gomi predicts. With scalable quantum computers, factoring problems will no longer be difficult to achieve, and attackers will be able to determine secret-keys from public-keys. “Once the secret-key is known, the bad actors can complete many different attacks, including pretending to be the legitimate party in exchanging sensitive information,” he notes. Will Quantum Computers Become the Next Cyber-Attack Platform? (informationweek.com)