Protecting data from quantum hackers

Assistant Professor Huck Bennett is working to keep our data safe from hackers when the quantum revolution comes.

Bennett has been funded by the National Science Foundation to investigate the feasibility of lattice-based cryptography to protect against the threat of quantum computers.

"Quantum computers have the ability to break the cryptography we currently use on the internet to shield our emails from prying eyes and protect our financial information from hackers," Bennett explained.

Solving for tomorrow

This is not just an issue for the future when quantum computers come online. Even today, bad actors are gathering encrypted data to crack in anticipation of the quantum revolution.

The security of cryptography derives from a set of challenging math problems that take computers a long time to solve-or at least we hope it does.

Because quantum computers can quickly solve some problems that serve as the basis of current cryptography, researchers have been in search of new classes of problems that are both suitable for use in cryptography and secure against quantum computers-problems that are "post-quantum."

Bennett's work is to pressure-test one of the suggested new post-quantum cryptography methods, lattice-based cryptography.

Hard enough?

Bennett explained that a lattice is a geometric object that looks like a regular "grid" of points in high-dimensional space: often 100 or more.

We can create math problems from this multidimensional lattice that are a great fit for cryptography. They are quick to solve if you have the right information, but without it, they take a huge amount of time and computing power.

Bennett's focus is on how "hard" problems on lattices are, or how much time it takes to solve them.

Specifically, his goal is to show that lattice-based cryptography is secure by showing that certain computational problems on lattices get exponentially harder as the dimensions grow-even for quantum computers.

But, he said, it's also important to play "hacker's advocate" and think about whether this complex cryptographic idea could fall apart.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.