This article is brought to you thanks to the collaboration of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum.
Author: Itan Barmes, Project Fellow, Quantum Security, World Economic Forum Geneva, Isaac Kohn, Partner, Deloitte & Colin Soutar, Managing Director, Cyber Risk, Deloitte
- Quantum computing could upend existing assumptions about the security of the blockchain.
- In the wrong hands, sophisticated attackers could seize cryptos directly from a wallet, or even as they are traded from one wallet to another.
- While the technology is not yet ready for this, we must prepare now to mitigate the threats of the future.
Quantum computing has reached an inflection point. Venture capitalists are pouring funding into the technology, and public initiatives are picking up pace as they explore the role it could play in our society.
As it develops, quantum computing will push existing areas of technology into uncharted territory — and perhaps none more so than blockchain.
Itself a relatively new innovation, blockchain technology allows for parties to perform peer-to-peer transactions in a system not governed by a central authority. Instead of trusting a central authority, blockchain provides a trust framework that is enabled by the properties of cryptographic algorithms.
As long as these algorithms are considered secure, activities that do not abide by the rules, such as illegitimate cryptocurrency transactions, are discarded, incentivizing actors to behave honestly. They are assumed to be secure against powerful supercomputers, now and for the foreseeable future.
But, as quantum computers evolve, this assumption is in danger of being upended — potentially exposing hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrencies to sophisticated cyber criminals.
Despite quantum computing being in a relatively early stage of development, specialists are already forecasting the potential of quantum-equipped actors to steal…
