Eindhoven University of Technology leads multi-million dollar project to secure data against quantum computers

Eindhoven University of Technology will lead a research program of eleven universities and companies that together will receive 3.9 million euros to develop cryptography techniques that are resistant to quantum computers.

The university announces this on its website. Professor of cryptology Tanja Lange will lead the project. The project will be named PQCRYPTO. The money for the research comes from the EU Horizon 2020 programme.

Current cryptographic techniques, such as RSA and ECC, use keys that cannot be cracked in the foreseeable future with current computer technology. If the quantum computer really becomes as powerful as many think, those keys will be a lot faster to retrieve. Lange has been trying to draw attention to the threat since 2006. She warns that while 2025 still seems far away, it may still be too late. Implementing a new cryptosystem takes between fifteen and twenty years, ‘and we are only in the research phase,’ says Lange.

Lange presented the research project during a session at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the United States. The session was part of a Cybersecurity in a Post-Quantum World workshop. The aim of the workshop was, among other things, to discuss the possible future standardization of post-quantum cryptography.

Some of the ‘quantum-proof’ techniques are already there, but they cost a lot of energy, the university writes. The search focuses, among other things, on techniques that do not visibly reduce the speed of the current generation of devices, but that are resistant to quantum computers. The European partnership focuses mainly on small devices, data traffic and cloud storage.