The research team, led by Wang Chao from Shanghai University, found that D-Wave’s quantum computers can optimize problem-solving in a way that makes it possible to attack encryption methods such as RSA.
Paper: http://cjc.ict.ac.cn/online/onlinepaper/wc-202458160402.pdf
Follow up to https://lemmy.ca/post/30853830
I think Schneier wrote this well before quantum computers were a reality - did he miss something fundamental in regards to them? Quantum computers are relatively new but the theory behind them is nearly a century old.
I’m not a physicist but quantum particles were still considered to be matter the last time I checked.
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So two things that are not accounted for here:
The issue here is that Schneier is discussing brute force forward computation of cryptography (IIRC of AES). Quantum computers don’t iteratively attack primes by attempting to compute all possible primes. The current conventional computer attacks against RSA also aren’t brute force hence why the advised size of an RSA key right now is 4096 bits.
This calculation only holds if there is no faster way than brute force iterating the entire key space.