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Comment by samirm | Hacker News Reader

Strange that they recommend an elliptic-curve based implementation considering it's not quantum resistant.

Not a legitimate complain at all--the jury is still out as to whether it will ever be possible to create a quantum computer capable of breaking current asymmetric primitives.

I'm assuming you're referring to the physical difficulties of creating such a device, since the theory has been there for a while now.[1]

I don't know why you're saying this isn't a "legitimate complaint" (or what even gives you the legitimacy to criticize such things), if anything this is just as, if not more legitimate than your comment.

Time and time again people thought we didn't need to worry about bigger registers/more memory/int overflow/screen sizes/etc. and they were proven wrong every time. Given everything we know so far and everything we've achieved in this field, I'd bet my money on the fact that we will have such capable devices in the future.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm

There likely will not be a cryptanalytic capable quantum computer for over a few decades.

I bet that's the NSA's (public) company line

Actually wasn’t the latest gov standard pushing for quantum-resistant algos? I vaguely remember some controversy over it on HN, because the switched recommendation was sudden and came out of nowhere (with at least one suggestion that they must be nearing it, or someone else is). Dont follow this topic normally, which is why I’m so vague on this, and possibly wrong.

If you're talking about NIST, they've initiated the process to standardise post-quantum public key crypto: https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/Post-Quantum-Cryptography/Pos...

Round 1 submissions were received by November 2017: https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/Post-Quantum-Cryptography/Rou...

Decades is way too pessimistic. Remember, tech grows exponentially.

Universal Quantum computers were barely started to be announced at that time by IBM and Google.

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