NYU Accidentally Exposed Military Code-Breaking Computer

Re:NYU Accidentally Exposed Military Code-Breaking Computer by 21 on Thursday May 11, 2017 @03:42PM (#14318865)

> The point of modern RSA is that we use a modulus that can't be factored by any conceivable computer, with limits derived from the physics of computation and projected far out into the future.

I'm sure you know about quantum computers. So what am I missing here? Surely they are a conceivable computer with a practical realization some decades away.

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Re:NYU Accidentally Exposed Military Code-Breaking Computer by tptacek on Thursday May 11, 2017 @03:48PM (#14318914)

Sorry, I meant "conceivable conventional computer" but forgot the extra word (I'd used it elsewhere on the thread).

If this was some crazy undocumented advance in quantum computing, I'd have written a different comment. But it's not: it's high end conventional computing, which absent some fundamental break in the integer factorization problem (in which case that break would be the story, not the supercomputer) isn't going to make a dent in RSA.

(I'm a QC skeptic, for what it's worth.)

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