Craig Gidney, from Google, said that quantum would break the easiest cryptography than thought. For Guillemet, the provisions of Gidney is like going «the impossible to even more impossible.» A recent reporter from the Google software engineer, Craig Gidney, revived among the Bitcoiner community the debate about the risks that quantum computing could represent for the safety of encryption systems, including those that protect Bitcoin (BTC). In his study, Gidney said that a quantum computer could break certain cryptographic schemes up to 20 times faster than was thought Previously, a finding that generated concern in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. However, their tests focused specifically on RSA cryptography of 2048 bits, a widely used encryption system to protect sensitive data, comparable to a mathematical lock that protects information in the digital world. Faced with that scenario, Charles Guillemet, director of Technology (CTO) of LEDger, the renowned creator of the Wallet Hardware, made a technical clarification on the real impact of that report on Bitcoin: the network created by Nakamoto does not use as a security method to the RSA system on which Gidney based his latest studies.
The clarification of the Ledger manager before the concern
Guillemet was in charge of clearing the doubts that arose after the Google engineer's report: «Bitcoin does not use RSA. In fact, no serious blockchain does it, ”said Ledger's CTO. Here it is worth clarifying that Gidney, from Google, did not mention that his study contemplates a danger to Bitcoin, but that he referred exclusively to RSA. RSA (Rivest, Shamir, Adleman), which bears the name of its creators Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman, is an asymmetric cryptography system developed in 1977. This method uses a pair of keys: a public, which is openly shared, and a private one, which remains secret. Your security is based on the Mathematical difficulty of factoring extremely large numbersproducts of two prime numbers. In simple terms, RSA works as a digital padlock: the public key figure the data, and Only private key can decipher them. This system is widely used in Internet protocols, such as HTTPS, to protect communications and sensitive data. However, Bitcoin and other networks do not depend on RSA for their safety. Instead, Bitcoin uses a cryptographic scheme based on elliptical curve cryptography, known as ECDSA (Elliptic curve digital firm algorithm). This system is also asymmetric, but is based on a different mathematical problem: the problem of discreet logarithm in elliptical curves. In essence, ECDSA allows Bitcoin users to generate public and private keys to sign transactions and verify their authenticity, pointing out that Only the owner of a private key can move their funds. For Guillemet, at present, the danger of a quantum computer for Bitcoin's security is far from a reality.
Guillemet limited the impact indicated by Google engineer
Gidney's report stressed that a quantum computer could reduce RSA's security of 2048 bits up to 20 times easier than estimated, which is equivalent to going from a security level of 2^112 to 2^107. That could sound alarming, but, at this point, Guillemet did contradict what Gidney said and explained that That change is insignificant: «Going from 2^112 to 2^107 in RSA's security is like going from impossible to even more impossible,» he said. In other words, even with the reduction indicated by Gidney, breaking RSA's encryption would continue to be an unattainable task for any computer, quantum or not, in a reasonable period of time, according to Guillemet. In addition, Ledger's CTO stressed an even greater obstacle: The lack of a quantum computer advanced enough to represent a real threat. According to Guillemet, so that a quantum attack is effective against any cryptographic system, «a machine with millions of stabilized and corrected shells of errors would be needed. We are not even close to that,» he said. As quantum technology progresses, it is likely that the debate on its impact on Bitcoin and other digital security systems continues. Some consider it a closer risk, while, as well as Guillemet, other experts have ruled their optimistic position in this regard, such as Adam Back, who Consider quantum danger as unlikely for now.
