The length of the decomposed key was 22 bits, much less than the traditional 2,048.
Bitcoin does not use RSA, but quantum advances question the need to shield the network.
A June 24 report explains that researchers at the University of Shanghai They have managed to decompose a 22 -bit RSA key. This meant breaking a widely used encryption system to protect sensitive data, such as bank transactions or digital communications.
Although 22 bits is a modest length compared to the keys RSA Of 2,048 bits used in practice, the success of the University of Shanghai suggests a step forward in the application of quantum technologies.
The experiment was based on converting the factorization problem (which supports the RSA) into a combinatorial optimization problem. RSAan asymmetric encryption system, ensures sensitive data when using a pair of keys: a public to encrypt and a private to decrypt, whose security depends on the difficulty of decomposing a large number in its prime factors.
Classically, breaking an RSA key requires exponential time on traditional computers, but quantum computing, with algorithms such as Shorcould reduce that complexity.
However, Shanghai University team chose to use a processor quantum anneaCreator for the company D-Wave Systems. This is a technique that uses quantum fluctuations to explore the solution space. Avoiding the typical deep circuits of other quantum systems, this technique produces more optimal solutions.
The report indicates that this D-Wave Systems processor used more than 5,000 Cubits (Basic Quantum Information Units) to achieve factorization.
Although it does not specify, it is understood that the publication refers to 5,000 physical cubits. In quantum computing, logical cubits are those that really matter because They guarantee errors correction and long -term stabilitybeing composed each of them, by hundreds or thousands of physical cubits that work together.
The advance of this Chinese university does not mean that RSA encryption is committed today: current keys resist attacks due to its exponentially larger size.
However, the experiment teaches what improvements in hardware and what quantum algorithms are approaching the “Q-Day”, the day the current cryptography will be vulnerable.
For Bitcoin the impact is indirect, since it does not use RSA encryption. Bitcoin is based on ECDSA (Digital signing of elliptical curve) and SHA-256 to protect the private keys of users and ensure the network, algorithms that guarantee their current integrity.
Many analysts consider that the quantum risk is still distant, such as Adam Back, Bitcoiner developer and founder of Blockstream, who believes that the alleged danger is “1 or 2 decades away” due to the current limitations of quantum computing.
However, other figures understood in the development of quantum warn that this danger could approach faster with ongoing technological advances.
