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Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security

https://blog.cloudflare.com/post-quantum-roadmap/
It will be interesting to compare PQ rollout to HTTPS rollout historically (either the "SSL becomes widespread in 2015" thing, or the deprecation SSL 3.0). Cloudflare is in an easy position to do stuff like this because it can decouple end user/browser upgrade cycles from backend upgrade cycles.

Some browsers and some end user devices get upgraded quickly, so making it easy to make it optionally-PQ on any site, and then as that rollout extends, some specialty sites can make it mandatory, and then browser/device UX can do soft warnings to users (or other activity like downranking), and then at some point something like STS Strict can be exposed, and then largely become a default (and maybe just remove the non-PQ algorithms entirely from many sites).

I definitely was on team "the risks of a rushed upgrade might outweigh the risks of actual quantum breaks" until pretty recently -- rushing to upgrade has lots of problems always and is a great way to introduce new bugs, but based on the latest information, the balance seems to have shifted to doing an upgrade quickly.

Updating websites is going to be so much easier than dealing with other systems (bitcoin probably the worst; data at rest storage systems; hardware).

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You can do PQ queries with us at qi.rt.ht!

Which one do you think is PQ-secure?

https://qi.rt.ht/?pq={api.,}{stripe,paypal}.com

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> news.ycombinator.com:443 is using X25519, which is not post-quantum secure.

This is the result of Cloudflare's test "Check if a host supports post-quantum TLS key exchange" offered on https://radar.cloudflare.com/post-quantum.

Hoping there is already a migration plan. Fortunately many modern tools make it easy to switch to PQ, maybe someone knows which stack HN is running and if it would be possible.

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Along similar lines, Mozilla recently updated their recommended server-side TLS configuration to enable the X25519MLKEM768 post-quantum key exchange now that it's making it into actually-deployed software versions: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS At the same time they removed their "old client" compatibility profile as newer TLS libraries do not implement the necessary algorithms (or at least do not enable them by default) and slightly tweaked the "intermediate" compatibility profile to remove a fallback necessary for IE 11 on Windows 7 (now Windows 10 is the minimum compatible version for that profile).
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Is this still theory or are there working Quantum systems that have broken anything yet?
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Any information on future CPU's with support for hardware accelerated PQC algorithms? Will all my old devices become slow when PQC is the norm and encrypted communication is no longer hardware accelerated?
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Does this mean we should be migrating our SSH keys to post-quantum crypto right now?
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Outside of the PQ algorithms not being as thoroughly vetted as others, is there any negatives to shifting algorithms? Like even if someone were to prove that quantum computing is a dud, is there any reason why we shouldn't be using this stuff anyway?
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Tangential question...

Seen that many are already moving to QC-resistant cryptography and that more are shifting by the day... I've got a question: what are the implications of quantum computers going to be if we consider that the entirety of cryptography will have moved to quantum-resistant cryptography?

In other words: I only ever read about quantum computing when it's to talk about breaking cryptography. But what if all cryptography moves to quantum-resistant scheme, all of it... Then what are the uses of quantum computing? Protein folding? Logistics?

Basically, so far, quantum computing research has the effect of many companies and projects adding quantum-resistant cryptographic schemes.

If, say, we've got a $10 million quantum computer that can break one 256 bit elliptic curve key in an hour... Great, EC is broken. But what if browsers, SSH, auth, etc. just about everything moves to PQ schemes...

Then what are those quantum computers useful for?

I understand that breaking even a single EC 256 bit key in a few hours on a $$$ machine is a very big deal.

But what else are they going to be useful for? For breaking ECC doesn't help humanity. It doesn't bring anything. It only destroys.

EDIT: for example I read stuff like: "Estimates are about three years to break a single 256 bit EC key on a 10 000 qbits quantum computer". What's a 10 000 qbits quantum computer going to be used for when everybody shall have moved to quantum-resistant algos?

The CDN part is the easy half. In my work the harder problem has most often been internal service mesh, mTLS between services, any infra that doesn’t terminate at a CDN. Has a bad habit of longer certificate lifetimes and older TLS stacks, and nobody is upgrading it for you.
Mullvad has PQ encryption available today. I recommend everyone use them, they're a 10/10 company.
Yet, the same Cloudflare wants to control entire internet traffic single-handedly.

The Internet was not created for this.

One could argue that 'but they are very good at preventing DDoS attacks' — yes they are; however, they have always loved control and kept their technology proprietary to lock their customers into their systems. And one day, a single line of code disrupted many services on the web.

Centralization and monopolies are much bigger threats to the future of the internet, IMHO. (Which always follows the same pattern: give your customers free or unbelievably cheaper services, even at a loss, lock them in, then jack up the price.)

Quantum computing, and the generic term 'quantum' is gearing up to be the next speculative investment hype bubble after AI, so prepare for a lot of these kinds of articles
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And that changes what?
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The secrecy around this is precisely the opposite of what we saw in the 90s when it started to become clear DES needed to go. Yet another sign that the global powers are preparing for war.
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