With the advent of quantum computing, it has become possible to envision the end of our most secure data encryption method- RSA.

Named after its three inventors, it is the standard national security organizations use for high sensitivity encryption of data. It’s what gives you the happy little hourglass as you log into the bank. It has been used since the development of it as the safest way to encrypt your data.

Part of the safeness of this encryption method is the time it takes to crack its key elements. We rest easy on our cyber laurels, knowing that it’s just too hard to break it… because it takes too looooong.

This security is coming to an end with the dawn of quantum computing. RSA is going to go down hard, however, due to its human operators.

The user who inputs the data is a ‘prime’ weakness, if you’ll pardon the pun. Their tendencies to lapse into pattern, repetition and probability allow for chinks in the cryptographic armour. From choosing a password less than 1024 bits long (who knows THAT length when signing into the bank!) To habitual password overuse, we are eroding the immutability of a classic encryption method whose time is drawing nigh.

As I have stated, RSA is on its way out due to the tools used for its key generation- the processor. As is true of many beautiful natural phenomena, what makes it a physical (electric bytes in a processor, hey they’re physically real!) reality has also contained the seeds of its downfall.

 

Processor developments are a ‘key’ weakness, (ach! pun it again!) as their limitations of speed, scope and time provide a false sense of security, which can be easily broken. From the humans working the enigma machine to the idea that, with upcoming technology like quantum polygonal processing (which could possibly break the largest accepted RSA tokens easily), updates in technology make the insurmountable, attainable. And when such advancements are bound to regularly break the bound of conventional security parameters, the human habit of ease in its habitual tendencies makes for a gaping gap in the security of modern kit.

Polygonal processing capacity will lead the happy little single row mail slot array of RSA into the sunset… Possibly weeks before it knows it’s dead.

-Clyde MacGregor.