Several top managers of the technology giant IBM have said that the emergence of quantum computers will be a real threat to cryptocurrencies and cryptography used in blockchain systems.
“With quantum computing, you can take possession of private keys through reverse engineering and, thus, access to wallets. I think this is a real threat. Bitcoin is built on an open blockchain, so you can see which wallets store the most bitcoins and attack these wallets, using a quantum computer to get the private key. I believe that this threat may come true soon”, said the head of the blockchain development at IBM, Jesse Lund.
He said that in the future, quantum computers will be able to calculate private keys using the available public keys as a template. Lund stressed that about half of the existing blockchains are subject to such an attack. In addition, the emergence of quantum computers will jeopardize almost all systems that use encryption. It is about both communication systems and private and government databases.
“Companies need to know about quantum computers and the potential risks they bear. They need to take certain measures in order not to become vulnerable when attacking using quantum computing”, said Nev Zunic, technical director of data security at IBM.
A similar opinion was expressed by Michael Osborne (Michael Osborne), manager of information security at IBM Research in Switzerland. He noted that the new quantum era in which we are entering will mark the lifespan for almost all the cryptography currently in use.
Note that at the beginning of the year, IBM introduced the first Q-system quantum commercial computer: a 20-qubit system combines the quantum and classical computing components necessary for its use in research and business applications.