Bitcoin is theoretically vulnerable to being cracked by quantum computers, but calculations show they would need to be a million times larger than those that exist today
Quantum computers would need to become about a million times larger than they are today in order to break the algorithm that secures bitcoin, which would put the cryptocurrency at risk from hackers.
The bitcoin network is kept secure by computers known as miners that use a cryptographic algorithm called SHA-256, which was created by the US National Security Agency. Breaking this code is essentially impossible for ordinary computers, but quantum computers, which can exploit the properties of quantum physics to speed up some calculations, could theoretically crack it open.
Now Mark Webber at the University of Sussex, UK, and his colleagues have investigated how large a quantum computer you would need to break bitcoin, in terms of the number of qubits, or quantum bits, the equivalent of ordinary computing bits.
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Every bitcoin transaction must be “confirmed” by the network of miners before it is added to the blockchain, the immutable ledger of who owns what. Each transaction is assigned a cryptographic key during this confirmation process, and cracking the key would allow you to take ownership of those bitcoins.
“The transactions get announced and there’s a key associated with that transaction,” says Webber. “And there’s a finite window of time that that key is vulnerable and that varies, but it’s usually around 10 minutes to an hour, maybe a day.”
Webber’s team calculated that breaking bitcoin’s encryption in a 10-minute window would require a quantum computer with 1.9 billion qubits, while cracking it in an hour would require a machine with 317 million qubits. Even allowing for a whole day, this figure only drops to 13 million qubits.
This is reassuring news for bitcoin owners because current machines have only a tiny fraction of this – IBM’s record-breaking superconducting quantum computer has only 127 qubits, so devices would need to become a million times larger to threaten the cryptocurrency, something Webber says is unlikely to happen for a decade.
Although bitcoin is secure for the foreseeable future, there are concerns about other encrypted data with a much wider window of vulnerability. An encrypted email sent today can be harvested, stored and decrypted in the future once a quantum computer is available – a so-called “harvest now, decrypt later” attack, which some security experts believe is already happening.
“People are already worried because you can save encrypted messages right now and decrypt them in the future,” says Webber. “So there’s a big concern we need to urgently change our encryption techniques, because in the future, they’re not secure.”
Webber's team… calculated that breaking bitcoin's encryption in a 10-minute window would require a quantum computer with 1.9 billion qubits, while cracking it in an hour would require a machine with 317 million qubits. Even allowing for a whole day, this figure only drops to 13 million qubits.
quantum computers have the potential to break some of the cryptographic algorithms that are currently used in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. These algorithms, such as the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA), are used to secure transactions and protect the integrity of the blockchain.
A 256-bit encryption is considered to be highly secure and it would take classical computers millions of years to crack it. However, quantum computers could potentially crack this level of encryption in mere seconds or minutes.
Quantum computers are super powerful and can tackle complex calculations, but using them for Bitcoin mining is a bit tricky. While they can crunch numbers insanely fast, Bitcoin's mining algorithm requires specific types of calculations that quantum computers aren't necessarily better at.
That same traditional computer would take 34,000 years to crack a password that was 12 characters and consisted of at least one upper case character, one number, and one symbol. To sum that up: password – cracked instantly. PassWorD – cracked in 22 minutes.
A new paper in AVS Quantum Science from researchers at British startup Universal Quantum has worked out that it would take a machine with 317 million to 1.9 billion qubits to crack Bitcoin.
Quantum computers are computers which exploit quantum mechanics to do certain computations far more quickly than traditional computers. A sufficiently large quantum computer would cause some trouble for Bitcoin, though it would certainly not be insurmountable.
In this situation, the data is already at risk. An attacker can intercept and store encrypted data today, and when quantum computers become feasible, the attacker could decrypt the stored data.
Is AES-256 Encryption Crackable? AES-256 encryption is virtually uncrackable using any brute-force method. It would take millions of years to break it using the current computing technology and capabilities.
Which Bitcoin mining hardware has the highest hash rate? The Antminer S19 XP Hyd, a cutting-edge Bitcoin mining device developed by Bitmain, boasts a remarkable hash rate of 255 terahashes per second (TH/s) using the SHA-256 algorithm. This high hash rate positions it as a leader in mining performance.
The Bitmain Antminer S21 Hyd 335T is the most profitable Bitcoin mining machine currently, followed by the Canaan Avalon Made A1266, and MicroBit Whatsminer M50S. If you want to mine other cryptocurrencies, the Bitmain Antminer KS3, Bitmain Antminer D9, and Bitmain Antminer K7 are all solid choices.
Scientists at Google first tested the company's Sycamore quantum computer using XEB in 2019, demonstrating that it could complete a calculation in 200 seconds that would have taken the most powerful supercomputer at the time 10,000 years to finish.
Something simple, short and predictable. Astonishingly, those are also the characteristics of the world's most common online password, which is 123456, according to online password management company NordPass.
How does John the Ripper guess passwords? John the Ripper uses a rainbow table approach: it hashes the guessed password and compares it to the list of password hashes you feed into it. If the hashes match, John remembers the plaintext password associated with it and can return that to the attacker.
Utilising the tool they developed, the scientific researchers found that a quantum computer with 13 million physical qubits could break Bitcoin encryption within a day; and it would take a 300 million qubit computer to break it within an hour.
If quantum computers were to break public key encryption, there would be significant consequences for the economy, privacy, and security. For example, hackers could use this capability to compromise US national security systems.
Quantum computing presents both opportunities and challenges for blockchain technology. While the immediate threat to blockchain consensus mechanisms remains low due to the current state of quantum computing, the potential long-term risks to wallet security and transaction integrity are significant.
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