News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Keeping the Internet fast and secure: introducing Merkle Tree Certificates. Parent comment

Re:Keeping the Internet fast and secure: introducing Merkle ... by tptacek on Tuesday October 28, 2025 @08:44PM (#45741248)
No. Nobody serious that I know of thinks Q-day has occurred or will occur in 2025. The more typical question is whether we're 10, 50, or 100 years away from it.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Keeping the Internet fast and secure: introducing Merkle ... by phire on Tuesday October 28, 2025 @11:26PM (#45742266)
I’m of the opinion that it’s unlikely to happen within 50 years.

But I still think it’s a good idea to start switching over to post-quantum encryption, because the lead time is so high. It could easily take a full 10 years to fully implement the transition and we don’t want to be scrambling to start after Q-day.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Keeping the Internet fast and secure: introducing Merkle ... by sunsetonsaturn on Wednesday October 29, 2025 @08:10AM (#45745751)
> 10 years

Moving from SHA-1 to SHA-2 took ~20 years - and that's the "happy path", because SHA-2 is a drop-in replacement.

The post-quantum transition is more complex: keys and signatures are larger; KEM is a cryptographic primitive with a different interface; stateful signature algorithms require special treatment for state handling. It can easily take more than 20 years.

[ Parent | on HN ]