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One of the fundamentals of cryptography is that keys or secret numbers are selected and used which are computationally infeasible for an attacker to compute the same key given the public information. Consider one of the most commonly used assumptions for cryptography, the RSA assumption, which states given a large number n = p*q such that p and q are primes, e such that GCD(e, ?(n)) = 1, and ciphertext C, it is computationally infeasible to compute the original message M such that C = M^e mod N. There are many other assumptions made by cryptographic protocols which rely on the computational infeasibility of an attacker having the ability to produce secret keys of different sorts. However, if there was a way to drastically increase the computational power of a machine these assumptions would not necessarily hold true. Many people optimistically speculate that one way to achieve this increase in computing power is by looking into quantum computing. What effects will this have on cryptography? Will we be able to enhance the current strategies of cryptographic methods or will new strategies have to be created? These are questions which, rightfully so, are already being asked as we verge on the barrier of the quantum computing capabilities. |