Chinese scientists use quantum computers to crack military-grade encryption

ChainCatcher News: Chinese scientists have launched the world's first effective attack on a widely used encryption method using a quantum computer. Researchers stated that this breakthrough poses a "real and significant threat" to the cryptographic protection mechanisms long used by critical sectors, including banking and the military.
Although the progress of general quantum computing has been slow and currently poses no threat to modern cryptography, scientists have been exploring various attack methods using specialized quantum computers.

In the latest work led by Wang Chao at Shanghai University, the team reported that they successfully cracked encryption algorithms using a quantum computer produced by Canada's D-Wave Systems. Leveraging D-Wave's advantages, they successfully attacked the Present, Gift-64, and Rectangle algorithms, all of which are representatives of the SPN (Substitution-Permutation Network) structure, a part of the widely used Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) in military and financial applications. For example, AES-256 is considered the best available encryption and is often referred to as military-grade encryption.