01 The problem
Two quantum threats, and new code that adds to them
Harvest now, decrypt later
Today, hackers can intercept and store encrypted data, then decrypt it with sufficiently powerful quantum computers in the future. This puts today's encryption and key-exchange systems, such as RSA and Diffie-Hellman, at risk. It all depends on how long the data must stay secret. If it has to stay private for 25 years, traffic recorded yesterday is already at risk.
Digital signature forgery
Digital signatures make it possible to check that software, certificates, documents and transactions are genuine. A quantum computer could derive private keys from the public ones and forge signatures. Signatures must stay trustworthy, including those in devices, certificate authorities and permanent records. For crypto-asset wallets, a public key exposed on-chain could also make unauthorized transfers possible.
Error-prone AI agents
When AI agents generate code, they tend to fall back on patterns and defaults they already know. When those patterns rely on vulnerable algorithms, the code can work correctly and pass its tests while still being exposed. In a controlled study, developers using an AI assistant wrote less secure code (Perry, Srivastava, Kumar and Boneh, ACM CCS 2023).
Harvest
Encrypted traffic is intercepted, and data is copied and stored.
Decrypt
Quantum computers break the public-key algorithms used to protect the stored copies.
Exposure
Data encrypted with RSA or ECC becomes readable, and digital signatures can be forged.