The essence of encrypted communications is based on mathematical principles. About 4000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians used the zeros of replacement in the carved prayers in the walls of the grave, to replace the standard hieroglyphic with unique symbols. This was not related to secrecy but a presentation of specialized knowledge. The simple act of replacing one symbol to lay the foundation for thousands of years of encryption development.
The Menwan civilization on the old island of Crete, about 3,600 years ago, has established a dangerous system, a writing system that is still not charged despite our ability to read his descendants, my line b.
SPARTANS, known as practical creativity, Scytale, developed a switch. A spirally written message about a specific penis, when not wrapped, became incomprehensible. Just by wrapping it around another rod of the same dimensions, the original message is back to appear.
Likewise, Julius Caesar secured his famous military correspondence by converting each of the alphabet with three distances, creating encryption, or Caesar encryption, baffles his opponents.
Moving to a more modern history, he saw the nineteenth century Thomas Bell employing a book to hide millions of dollars in the buried treasure. By replacing the words in his message with numbers that are compatible with specific words in a book chosen – in his case, he created the independence declaration – a huge mystery. While one of his three letters was eventually broken in 1985, and a public location in Bidford County, Virginia, was revealed, the other two are still unknown due to the unknown source books. Thousands continue to try to decipher these zeros every year, without success.
Even in the last half of the twentieth century, the Buruji killer was used in an alternative alternative, a more complex method that replaces the letters with many different symbols. This technique has made a traditional frequency analysis, which depends on the common denominators of the messages in a language, largely ineffective. For 51 years, the message of expert experts in the world has made. Only in 2020, three of the amateur sectors finally broke it, and revealed a conversion to the chilling.
All of these historical methods, regardless of their complexity, participate in the basic dependence on sporting rules and patterns. This joint feature, as soon as it has its strength, is now the greatest weakness in the face of emerging technology: quantum computing. These machines work on completely strange principles on the traditional calculation, which poses an existential threat to almost an encrypted secret.
The appearance of quantum computers offers a model in the world of encryption. Traditional computers processing information, representing either 1 or 0.Qubits“Which, through a phenomenon called overwhelming, can be found as 1 and 0 at one time. This allows quantum computers to make accounts quickly and cannot be imagined. Consider safely with a million groups; the traditional computer will try each group in succession, while the quantum computer can try all groups at once.
This theoretical feature has become a tangible fact. In December 2024, Google unveiled “Project Willow”, a quantum computer capable of solving problems in minutes that will take faster than superconducting devices than the era of the universe. Specifically, the ability to break the RSA 4096 safety keys, a level of encryption that was pre -broken in advance, in just five minutes.
The RSA encryption algorithm, the backbone of modern digital security, depends on the difficulty of putting the very main number. However, quantum computers can find these initial factors quickly, as it effectively disintegrates digital communication security, banking transactions and sensitive government data.
This penetration was not completely unexpected. The National Security Agency (NSA) has warned for years of “Y2Q”, which is the expected moment when computers become strong enough to break the current encryption. While he was initially expected between 2030 and 2040, Project Willow has greatly accelerated this schedule.
The main challenge in quantum computing was to correct errors, as quantum cases are incredibly fragile and vulnerable to exacerbation of minor environmental disorders. This Google’s Willow project is taken by collecting Qubits, with some dedicated to treatment and others only to track and correct errors. This innovative approach, in a counter -system, makes the system stronger with more Qubits. With the help of artificial intelligence, quantum computers are now on the correct path to break the current encryption methods by 2029, years before the specified date.
The effects of this rapid progress are deep and already manifested. In 2024, the Ministry of Defense accelerated the quantum update program, and imposes that critical systems become resistant to the quantity by 2025. This directive extends beyond future contacts; It is a race to protect each part of the coded data at all, including historical records. Intelligence agencies have collected huge quantities of encrypted data since the Cold War, from old email messages and financial records to private messages, all of which are now weak, pending decoding with strong quantum machines.
The financial sector realizes this threat, which is waving on the horizon. For example, the security of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin depends on the same sporty principles now vulnerable to quantitative attacks.
Shadow groups have already collected hundreds of thousands of cryptocurrency portfolios, expecting the moment the quantitative computers can open billions of dollars in digital assets. In anticipation, institutions such as JP Morgan began building an admission of quantitative resistance in 2023-not for material currency, but for computers, designed for work is not completely connected to paper records and human traveling.
The quantitative detection of encryption carries significant societal repercussions. Imagine a scenario in which personal medical records are displayed, including sensitive diagnoses and psychological assessments, publicly on digital advertising boards in major cities. This is not default. Reports indicate that such violations have already occurred. Dating applications, with a group of personal messages, pictures and the history of the browser, have also proven at risk, creating a new wave of privacy concerns and the possibility of exploitation.
The successive effects extend to the critical infrastructure. Police transmitting systems that reach non -connection to the Internet, traffic lights that work to work, and ATMS to distribute cash randomly, and independent vehicles that turn into unnamed machines are all possible consequences for the system widely settlement.
News broadcasts, personal email messages and public figures offered were kidnapped during live surroundings confirming the extensive nature of this threat. The emergency broadcast of the National Security Agency, and announces a compromise in the country and the imposition of martial law, highlights the severity of this shift in global security.
In response to this unprecedented challenge, major technology companies such as Google, IBM and Microsoft operate extensively on “”Be post -Quetum encryptionThis includes developing new encoding methods that depend on very complex sports problems so that quantum computers cannot efficiently solve.
However, history provides a warning story: Each symbol is ultimately dismantled “unbreakable”, from the German puzzle machine in World War II to the Japanese purple code. The National Security Agency itself once claimed that the RSA encryption would take billions of years to defeat, which is now clearly a liar.
As a result, some banks and government agencies return to pre -digital security protocols. The Internet devices are revived, paper records, personal checking, one -time platform, dead drops, and cycling. This return to analog methods, while it is effective in isolating sensitive information, provides only temporary solutions. The continuous cats and mouse game between the code makers and Code Breakers introduced a new and more intense stage.
The annoying reality, as it revealed investigations and internal acceptance, is that the end of the quantum world, as it has been called, may not be a threat in the future but a current fact.
Evidence indicates that quantum computers, which have been developed through joint government programs, have quietly crashed encryption keys for years, providing intelligence agencies access to huge amounts of sensitive information. Clear societal chaos and the collapse of digital privacy may be partly, as a strategy to explain how to get such intelligence.
In this new reality, where digital secrets are increasingly exposed, the most powerful entities are not those who can break the encryption, but rather those who can maintain confidentiality without them. This includes the creation of completely incompatible operations, dependence on human memory, and the use of physical methods of communication that does not leave any digital imprint.
The focus has turned from preventing the breaking of the symbols to survival in a world where the symbols are no longer really safe. The race is not related to building the most powerful quantum computers, but about adaptation with its presence and the inevitable effects of privacy and security on a global scale.
