Researchers in China claim to have reached a breakthrough in quantum computing, figuring out how they can break the RSA public-key encryption system using a quantum computer of around the power that will soon be publicly available.
Breaking 2048-bit RSA — in other words finding a method to consistently and quickly discover the secret prime numbers underpinning the algorithm — would be extremely significant. Although the RSA algorithm itself has largely been replaced in consumer-facing protocols, such as Transport Layer Security, it is still widely used in older enterprise and operational technology software and in many code-signing certificates.
