With any new technology comes new threats and it is good to see these threats are being worked on.
COTI released a rather technical post last night and after a number of reads feel qualified enough to update on what COTI is working on with regard to the threat of Quantum Computers. My version is the basic overview and if you want a deeper dive the link is at the bottom of this article.
The threat is more about the ability to what they can do against what our computers are capable of and why quantum computers offer a different type of threat especially with data and security breaches. It is good to know that the tech COTI developed along with SODA Labs called Garbled Circuits has this covered and will be ready by early next year.
The banking sector would be under threat mainly down to the fact they use RSA algorithm which uses complex mathematics. Two large prime numbers create one number and then the protection is the difficulty in finding those original prime numbers working backwards and is virtually impossible unless you have a quantum computer.
The same applies to crypto with Bitcoin using Elliptic Curve Cryptography which is used to generate a public key.
ECC relies on the difficulty of finding discrete logarithms on elliptic curves.
I have no clue what this entails, but again this is vulnerable to quantum computing. There is an algorithm called Shor's Algorithm specifically designed for quantum computing which seriously threatens crypto and the banking sector.
Thankfully there are a few options with security against quantum computing namely 3 of them. Lattice-based cryptography, Code-based cryptography and Isogeny-based cryptography which I will not discuss and if anyone is interested they can read up on them themselves.
COTI has Garbled Circuits which will work against and nullify any threat from quantum computers. This is done by adjusting 3 components.
- Key distribution for users. The key needs to be doubled in length.
- Encryption of user’s inputs
- Computation on ciphertexts
To be safe in the quantum world we need to double down on the security we already have mainly because now we work with 126 bit keys and will require 252 bit keys to remain secure for now at least. Obviously this will have be a continuous development taking place in order to stay ahead and secure.
I think I got lucky when I invested in COTI when I did and it was not for the reasons we are seeing now. There was no talk of Garbled Circuits 2 years ago and this is new tech that has been developed to be used on the blockchains helping to secure privacy. Obviously with the tech they have this crypto project has become rather important within the crypto eco system and why I am excited to see where this leads.
If you would like to read the full article COTI published on this subject here is the link Technical Deep-Dive: COTI’s Answer to Quantum Computing