tech
April 3, 2026
"Digital Apocalypse" Arrives Earlier: Quantum Computers Crack Strongest Passwords in Minutes
For years, experts assured us that quantum computers were a distant threat, but new research shows that the digital "walls" protecting our money and privacy could fall much sooner than we thought. Scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the University of California have discovered that quantum machines don't need to be as powerful as believed to "break" state-of-the-art encryption.
TL;DR
- Quantum computers pose a more immediate threat to digital security than previously believed.
- New research indicates that fewer qubits are needed to break advanced encryption like ECC and RSA.
- ECC encryption, used in blockchain technologies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, is particularly vulnerable.
- A quantum computer with 26,000 physical qubits could break ECC-256 in 10 days, far fewer than previous estimates.
- Google suggests the strongest protection could fall in minutes once quantum hardware scales sufficiently.
- Current encryption needs to be replaced with post-quantum cryptography by 2029, not 2033 as previously set by the US government.
- Android 17 will be the first quantum-resistant operating system, supporting the ML-DSA algorithm.