Cryptography in a Quantum World

TL;DR

This paper explores how quantum mechanics influences cryptography, discussing its potential to both enhance and threaten data security, and emphasizing the need to understand quantum effects in cryptographic practices.

Contribution

It provides an overview of the impact of quantum mechanics on cryptography, highlighting the dual nature of quantum phenomena as both opportunities and challenges for privacy.

Findings

Quantum mechanics introduces new cryptographic possibilities.

Quantum phenomena pose threats to classical cryptographic security.

Understanding quantum effects is crucial for future cryptography.

Abstract

Although practised as an art and science for ages, cryptography had to wait until the mid-twentieth century before Claude Shannon gave it a strong mathematical foundation. However, Shannon's approach was rooted is his own information theory, itself inspired by the classical physics of Newton and Einstein. But our world is ruled by the laws of quantum mechanics. When quantum-mechanical phenomena are taken into account, new vistas open up both for codemakers and codebreakers. Is quantum mechanics a blessing or a curse for the protection of privacy? As we shall see, the jury is still out!