Researchers now estimate that cracking current crypto-security systems may require as few as 500,000 qubits, a reduction by a factor of 20 from previous assessments. This finding significantly shortens the timeline for potential breaches affecting sensitive infrastructure like satellite controls, power grids, and financial institutions.

The work by Ryan Babbush of Google Quantum AI and colleagues reveals that approximately 90% of current crypto-schemes rely on solving complicated polynomial equations based on elliptic curve cryptography, rather than factoring large integers. “Quantum technologies have been thought of as ‘over a decade away’ for a long time,” says Stephanie Simmons, a quantum researcher from Simon Fraser…