NSA Developing Quantum Computer To Crack Encryption

Documents leaked by Edward Snowden have revealed that the NSA is building a quantum computer to crack the encryption that keeps online activities secure.The development of such a computer would leave everyday internet users, corporations and foreign governments open to spying by the NSA.

Documents obtained by The Washington Post indicate that so far the NSA have spent $80 million developing the technology but as yet they do not have a working machine. The research is being conducted under a project called Penetrating Hard Targets and it is believed the headquarters of the project are in Maryland.

Quantum computers are able exploit certain properties of the matter that actually makes up the computer which enables them, under certain conditions, to process hundreds to thousands of calculations simultaneously. This means encryption can be overcome in a very short space of time when compared to conventional computing methods,

Currently computers generate keys to unscramble encryption but they then have to test the keys one at a time. Large ‘super computers’ speed up the process but as a huge number of keys are used to lock away data in a huge number of systems, the approach is still very slow when compared to quantum computing.

Many countries have been researching quantum computers, but no nation has yet come up with a working machine. The documents provided by Edward Snowden do suggest however that the NSA researchers have had some limited success in developing the basic first steps in building such a computer.