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The development of powerful quantum computers is a looming threat to currently used encryption methods. Asymmetric encryption methods and thus public key infrastructures are particularly affected. Encrypted data that is recorded today will be easy to decrypt in the future thanks to quantum computers. This means that considerable damage can be done retrospectively
A self-driving car developed and sold this decade is highly likely to be exposed to new attack risks unprotected during its operational lifetime. So, as soon as long-lived products and services run into the quantum computing era with encryption methods in use today, it will be too late for companies to act in time.
Decision makers from relevant industries must therefore take action today to adequately protect against future quantum computing threats. Affected industries include
- transportation (e.g., automotive industry, railroad operations, airports)
- healthcare (e.g., healtcare industry, patient data)
- the energy supply industry (e.g., power plant, grid operations)
- government (e.g. police, military, government, judiciary),
- research & development (e.g. high-tech companies, government research institutions).
Today, quantum-safe applications can already be implemented and tested in practice. Specifically, these are the following use cases:
(1) Sunray Web Browser: PQC Web Browser, based on Mozilla Firefox, provides all the features of a modern browser with built-in support for PQC TLS.
(2) PQC Web Server: based on Apache Tomcat, it provides all the functions of a modern web server with built-in support for PQC TLS.
(3) Sunbeam Email Client: PQC encrypted email, based on Mozilla Thunderbird, it provides all the features of a modern email client with built-in support for PQC SMIME.
(4) PQCDoc: Signing and encryption of archived documents with selected PQC algorithms.
To use these applications, PQC certificates must be generated and used from the specially enhanced MTG Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). For this purpose, a free online tool is available to all trade fair visitors. The PQC algorithms used are Classic McEliece and Sphincs+. These have so far proven successful in the selection rounds of the NIST standardization process.
