Quantum technology brings new opportunities for upgrading commercial cryptography. Traditional public key cryptography can be cracked in just 0.3 seconds.
On June 13, at the 10th Shanghai International Technology Fair Cryptography Application and Innovation Development Conference, the G60 Quantum Cryptography Application Innovation Center was officially established. The innovation center is jointly composed of many cryptography companies in the Yangtze River Delta, including Guoke Quantum, KUST Guodun Quantum, China Telecom Quantum, Geer Software, Zhixun Cryptography, and Xuntai Quantum. It is committed to uniting cooperative enterprises in the quantum communication and commercial fields to carry out professional technical research, formulate standards for the transformation of results, and promote the integrated application of quantum technology and cryptography technology.
Many business people at the scene told reporters that 2030 may be the first year of the development of quantum technology. Given the revolutionary changes that quantum computing will bring to network security, the commercial cryptography industry will also usher in a new round of technological upgrades.
Commercial encryption is the underlying technology to ensure network information security, and is also one of the information technology industries that have emerged in recent years. In April 2023, the "Regulations on the Administration of Commercial Encryption" was revised and adopted at the fourth executive meeting of the State Council and officially came into effect on July 1. The revised "Regulations on the Administration" canceled the original approval of commercial encryption product production units, the licensing of commercial encryption product sales units, and the approval of commercial encryption product varieties and models, and implemented a commercial encryption testing and certification system, which was interpreted by the outside world as the backward shift of supervision and the decentralization of management, and the market vitality was effectively stimulated.
Against this background, more and more companies are entering the commercial cryptography field, and many companies have also begun to engage in research on the latest technologies of quantum communication and quantum-resistant cryptography.
Since the word "quantum" is involved, quantum-resistant cryptography is based on quantum computing. With the continuous advancement of quantum computing, network data computing capabilities are developing rapidly, which may herald a revolution in the next generation of information processing technology. Both scientific research and industrial simulation will benefit from quantum computing. But this also lays hidden dangers for network security - if quantum computing is used for network attacks and data theft, traditional data encryption methods will suffer a "dimensionality reduction attack."
"On the classical computers we use now, to crack RSA-129, 20 countries need to mobilize 800 of the highest-performance computers, which takes eight months to complete. But if we use a quantum computer to crack it, it can be done in just 0.3 seconds," Dong Mingfu, deputy general manager of Geer Software, gave an example to reporters.
Dong Mingfu introduced that many countries in the world are currently deploying quantum-resistant cryptographic technology. In 2018, the United States promulgated the National Quantum Planning Act, announcing the acceleration of quantum technology research and development; in 2023, the United States issued the National Cybersecurity Strategy, proposing a strategy of government first and private institutions following, gradually completing the transition of networks and systems to quantum-resistant cryptography. Some leading international Internet companies are also deploying quantum computing, such as Google, which has launched quantum cloud computing services.
According to Dong Mingfu, the development of quantum computing and related technologies can already see the dawn of an explosion. "The development of quantum technology is already a certainty. According to the current scientific research progress, the industry predicts that 2030 will be the first year of quantum computer development." At the same time, he said that quantum-resistant cryptography is related to national information security. If quantum computing technology becomes popular, the current network cryptography system will no longer be able to support network security. The research and development of quantum-resistant cryptographic technology needs to be put on the agenda as soon as possible.
Anti-quantum cryptography has taken on the heavy responsibility of innovating commercial cryptography technology, but it will take a long time to be implemented. During the Shanghai International Technology Fair, many commercial cryptography companies said that although the scale of the commercial cryptography market is constantly increasing, the industry's profit margin is still meager and the phenomenon of internal circulation is relatively serious.
An industry insider said that many large cybersecurity companies and commercial encryption companies laid off employees last year, with the average layoff rate probably being around 30% to 40%. However, some industry insiders believe that the industry downturn is a short-term fluctuation, and commercial encryption companies as software service providers will inevitably be affected by the overall environment, but the development prospects of the commercial encryption industry have not changed.
For the commercial encryption industry, the bigger problem may be the low market acceptance. "In foreign countries, software security services account for 95% of the market share of the encryption industry, while hardware products account for only 5%. In China, it is just the opposite, with hardware investment accounting for 95% and software services accounting for only 5%. Qian Zheng, general manager of Guanyuan Technology, believes that due to the strict privacy data protection and information security protection in foreign countries, the industrial development environment of commercial encryption is also better accordingly.
To improve the domestic market's acceptance, on the one hand, companies need to promote market education, and on the other hand, it also takes time to settle. Dong Mingfu said that with the promotion of technologies such as artificial intelligence, intelligent driving, and the metaverse, people's demand for commercial cryptographic technology will become higher and higher. "Recently, some fraud cases involving digital people or AI face-changing have attracted social attention. More and more public information leakage incidents will eventually cause people to pay attention to information security."
In order to popularize the importance of commercial cryptography to the society, a new cryptography science display area was added to the commercial cryptography exhibition area during this year's Shanghai International Technology Fair. It is hoped that through fun interactive games on cryptography knowledge, group photos and other forms, cryptography knowledge and its important role will be popularized to the audience, thereby enhancing the public's awareness of cryptography security.
In the lobby of the Expo Exhibition Hall, a new cryptography science display area has been added to the commercial cryptography exhibition area.
