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by bsaul 2801 days ago
I'm not an expert at all, but fwiu quantum computers makes cryptographic encryption a linear problem.
2 comments

This is not true, symmetric block ciphers (AES) are at worst about halved in strength.

Asymmetric crypto that depends on prime factorization or discreet logarithms (such as RSA and EDSA) are indeed fatally weakened by large enough quantum computer, but it is not a problem for other mathematically one way "hard" crypto constructs like hash trees or the McEliece cryptosystem.

In that case can we start computing cryptographic products with quantum computers such that there is no gap? If we reduce the time complexity of factoring a prime number to linear wouldn’t we be able to produce larger cryptographic products? Effectively going back to where we started but with more computing power? Surely this would require easy access to quantum computation to be practical and thus a gap in power, but necessity would drive the market to make this type of power more mainstream.
> In that case can we start computing cryptographic products with quantum computers such that there is no gap?

QC solves one kind of problems, that are hard for classical computers, but not another (see all the links to post-quantum crypto in the comments). OTOH there will be a very large window during which QC will be cheap enough to rent by the hour on AWS, but equipping every lightbulb with a QC will be prohibitively expensive (think current GPU prices).

It would still take linear time to determine the prime factors