How to Fix the Internet: Cryptography Makes a Post-Quantum Leap

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The cryptography that protects our privacy and security online relies on the fact that even the strongest computers will take essentially forever to do certain tasks, like factoring prime numbers and finding discrete logarithms which are important for RSA encryption, Diffie-Hellman key exchanges, and elliptic curve encryption. But what happens when those problems – and the cryptography they underpin – are no longer infeasible for computers to solve? Will our online defenses collapse?

Not if Deirdre Connolly can help it. As a cutting-edge thinker in post-quantum cryptography, Connolly is making sure that the next giant leap forward in computing – quantum machines that use principles of subatomic mechanics to ignore some constraints of classical mathematics and solve complex problems much faster – don’t reduce our digital walls to rubble. Connolly joins EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley to discuss not only how post-quantum cryptography can shore up those existing walls but also help us find entirely new methods of protecting our information.

In this episode you’ll learn about:

• Why we’re not yet sure exactly what quantum computing can do yet, and that’s exactly why we need to think about post-quantum cryptography now
• What a “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” attack is, and what’s happening today to defend against it
• How cryptographic collaboration, competition, and community are key to exploring a variety of paths to post-quantum resilience
• Why preparing for post-quantum cryptography is and isn’t like fixing the Y2K bug
• How the best impact that end users can hope for from post-quantum cryptography is no visible impact at all
• Don’t worry—you won’t have to know, or learn, any math for this episode!

Deidre Connolly is a research and applied cryptographer at Sandbox AQ with particular expertise in post quantum encryption. She also co-hosts the “Security Cryptography Whatever” podcast about modern computer security and cryptography, with a focus on engineering and real-world experiences. Earlier, she was an engineer at the Zcash Foundation – a nonprofit that builds financial privacy infrastructure for the public good – as well as at Brightcove, Akamai, and HubSpot.