Chinese researchers claim to have broken RSA with a quantum computer. Experts aren’t so sure

Researchers in China claim to have reached a breakthrough in quantum computing, figuring out how they can break the RSA public-key encryption system using a quantum computer of around the power that will soon be publicly available.

Breaking 2048-bit RSA — in other words finding a method to consistently and quickly discover the secret prime numbers underpinning the algorithm — would be extremely significant. Although the RSA algorithm itself has largely been replaced in consumer-facing protocols, such as Transport Layer …

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