Quantum Cracks Military-Grade ID Encryption – or Did It?

Recent claims that Chinese researchers have cracked military-grade encryption using quantum computing have sparked concern and headlines ¹. However, a further look at the claims reveals that the picture is not quite that straightforward.

A team led by Wang Chao from Shanghai University recently published a paper titled ‘Quantum Annealing Public Key Cryptographic Attack Algorithm Based on D-Wave Advantage,’ in the Chinese Journal of Computers, which describes attacks on RSA encryption using a D-Wave quantum annealer. The researchers proposed two approaches that combined quantum annealing with classical cryptographic techniques.

These approaches allowed them to factorise numbers larger than previously possible using this type of technology.