DevOps Articles

Is AES-256 Quantum Resistant?

With quantum computers getting more powerful each year, many worry about the safety of modern encryption standards. As quantum computers improve in performance and the number of qubits used for calculations increases, current cryptosystems are under threat.

Many asymmetric encryption algorithms have been mathematically proven to be broken by quantum computers using Shor’s algorithm.

That means that quantum computers are not expected to be able to reduce the attack time enough to be effective if the key sizes are large enough.

An attacker could try the following: If you are implementing AES in a cryptosystem in 2020 you should favor AES-256 over AES-128 for the quantum resistance and extra security that it offers.