Bitcoin in danger? – The security of bitcoins is based on advanced encryption concepts. Since its inception, many users have wondered what will become of the network in the era of quantum computers. A situation closer than we thought according to the results of a Chinese study. But what is it really?
RSA-2048 Broken by Chinese Researchers?
At the end of last week, a scientific article had the effect of a bomb in the world of Bitcoin. Thus, a group of Chinese researchers have published a study that would show that it is possible to break the RSA-2048 encryption algorithm.
Additionally, this news could impact many other areas. For example, credit cards are protected by RSA-1024 and RSA-2048 algorithms.
Obviously, this is not for everyone. Indeed, this study focuses on the use of quantum computing to decipher this algorithm.
As a reminder, theclassical computer science use the concept of bit whose value can be 0 or 1. For its part, thequantum computing is based on a concept of qubits which represents the coherent superposition of at least two quantum ground states.
After figuring out the attack vector, the Chinese team used their algorithm to factor a 48-bit number on a quantum computer made up of 10 qubits.
Actually endangering the RSA-2048 algorithm would be You need to have a much more powerful quantum computer. According to the estimates proposed by the report, to crack RSA-2048 it would take a quantum computer with 372 qubits.
For comparison, the most powerful quantum computer in existence is the IBM Osprey which has 433 qubits.
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Is bitcoin in danger?
Quickly, many experts sifted through the publication back and forth looking for errors or inaccuracies.
So many have declared skeptical of what was announced in the publication. In fact, the algorithm used by Chinese researchers to corrupt RSA-2048 comes from another widely controversial scientific publicationas Bruce Schneier explains:
“If it is true that the Chinese paper depends on this Schnorr technique which does not scale, the techniques of this Chinese paper will not scale either. »
Therefore, the algorithm is based on Claus Schnorr’s ratio. Although he claims to “be able to destroy the RSA encryption system”, this limited to small orders of magnitude. In fact, this algorithm breaks down as the order of magnitude increases.
As a result, the algorithm works based on the factorization of a 48-bit number as presented in the Chinese study, but this does not allow for processing orders of magnitude on the order of those used by RSA -1024 or 2048.
In other words, RSA algorithms still have a bright future ahead of them before they are cracked. On his side, Bitcoin is based on an ECDSA code that is comparable in complexity to RSA-3072. Therefore, the banking sector will be in trouble long before Bitcoin is corrupted.
While waiting to be able to break the Bitcoin encryption, hackers have other playgrounds, in fact in 2022 more than $3 billion that has been stolen from the crypto ecosystem.
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