New computers could trigger security breaches, scientist says

The next generation of computers could crack bank and financial industry coding systems and trigger catastrophic security breaches unless controls are introduced, a Cork-based scientist has warned.

Existing online security technology would not survive an attack once quantum computing has been developed, said Dr Emanuele Pelucchi from the Tyndall National Institute at University College Cork (UCC).

Dr Pelucchi will speak at a public lecture this evening at the Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition in London.

His lecture is also one of a series of events organised in UCC to commemorate the life and contribution of the university’s first professor of mathematics, George Boole.

Boole is famously credited with being the father of modern computing as his research allowed the creation of the first computer.

His Boolean logic, involving different variables denoted by ones and zeros, is what allows the electronic circuits of a computer to carry out complex tasks.

Dr Pelucchi said that our understanding of computing will undergo profound change once the technologies to enable quantum computing come into play.

He said that it is difficult to comprehend the power of these new machines.

The scientist said that computations that could take a year for a conventional computer to run “could be solved in a matter of seconds using a quantum computer”.

Dr Pelucchi said that quantum computing could also lead to the collapse of conventional computer-based security systems, as even the most complex “public-key” security programmes could be picked apart in seconds.

Current generation

The current generation of computers rely on electronic circuits to move and handle data, manipulated via Boolean Logic.

A quantum computer will exploit characteristics associated with quantum mechanics and the quantum state of particles at the atomic scale.

Data held as a one or a zero can only exist in either of those two states in today’s computers.

However, data in a quantum computer can exploit superposition, whereby an element of quantum information, a qubit, can be both one and zero at the same time, as well as everything in between.

Dr Pelucchi said that successful but limited experiments have proven that this state is possible, but a working quantum computer remains 20 or even 30 years away.