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by dontbenebby 1297 days ago
I’m not a cryptographer yet.

What make it “post quantum”?

Isn’t all symmetric encryption pretty quantum resistant?

(Including one time pads, AES, etc?)

1 comments

Symmetric encryption is quantum-resistant.

Most modern asymmetric encryption (public key encryption) is not resistant to attacks with quantum computers because modern public keys are based on something called "hidden subgroup problems" which can be solved easily with quantum computers (if they existed).

However, quantum-resistant asymmetric encryption does exist, it is just not yet common or battle-tested.

Of course, all of this depends (as usual) on complexity theory conjectures. Very plausible conjectures, but not yet strictly proven theorems.

>hidden subgroup problems

Thanks for the explainer I’ll read on this when I get some free time.