Security News > 2022 > August > Single-Core CPU Cracked Post-Quantum Encryption Candidate Algorithm in Just an Hour

A late-stage candidate encryption algorithm that was meant to withstand decryption by powerful quantum computers in the future has been trivially cracked by using a computer running Intel Xeon CPU in an hour's time.

The algorithm in question is SIKE - short for Supersingular Isogeny Key Encapsulation - which made it to the fourth round of the Post-Quantum Cryptography standardization process by the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology.

"Ran on a single core, the appended Magma code breaks the Microsoft SIKE challenges $IKEp182 and $IKEp217 in about 4 minutes and 6 minutes, respectively," KU Leuven researchers Wouter Castryck and Thomas Decru said in a new paper.

"SIKE is an isogeny-based key encapsulation suite based on pseudo-random walks in supersingular isogeny graphs," the description from the algorithm authors reads.

Quantum-resistant cryptography is an attempt to develop encryption systems that are secure against both quantum and traditional computing systems, while also interoperating with existing communications protocols and networks.

The idea is to ensure that data encrypted today using current algorithms such as RSA, elliptic curve cryptography, AES, and ChaCha20 is not rendered vulnerable to brute-force attacks in the future with the advent of quantum computers.

News URL

https://thehackernews.com/2022/08/single-core-cpu-cracked-post-quantum.html