This is not a new issue. Security has been dealing with data stored encrypted with obsolete algorithms since forever. Anybody who uses encryption at rest is already used to dealing with this, because computing power is rising continuously and flaws keep being found in old algorithms.
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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I've always worried about this. I think that Millennials, and especially Gen Z, will be the best-documented lives in history. Almost everything you've ever done online is sitting on a hard drive somewhere. Once the encryption schemes are broken, posterity will have full access to all of it. They'll probably study us for hundreds of years—possibly thousands (if we even make it that far as a species).
I've also wondered if all of that data collected about a person could be used to recreate them—a digital copy. It probably wouldn't be perfect, but I bet it would be close enough to be useful.
I'm definitely not excited for people to have access to and study my college Facebook account :-P
Once the encryption schemes are broken, it's not just posterity, but every malicious actor with access to encryption-breaking tech will have a field day.
I don't mind a large collection of data about me being made available to historians, I just mind that happening with my contemporaries.
That's actually the lesser issue, because we have quantum-resistant encryptions algorithms already. The problem is with old stuff that was stored encrypted with pre-quantum algorithms.
I've also wondered if all of that data collected about a person could be used to recreate them—a digital copy. It probably wouldn't be perfect, but I bet it would be close enough to be useful.
I think people overestimate how accurate these models are. Based on the ads I get, I'm sure they fully don't understand who I am as a person and what my interests are. I have never once cared about Kanye or the Kardashians, and yet I get ads for "news" about them fucking constantly.
Hey chill... This exists after a ddg search: https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2022/07/nist-announces-first-four-quantum-resistant-cryptographic-algorithms
Did you read the article? I will point out that we have/are working on quantum safe encryption algorithms so this is kind of unecessary doom and gloom. I actually work in this area and tbh the algorithms are ready to be implemented whenever companies want to. NIST QSC competition: https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/post-quantum-cryptography
In fact algorithms like AES are still quantum safe as long as key sizes are increased sufficiently
Quantum computers will make current encryption methods a joke.
Nah plenty of encryption services switched to quantum resistant encryption half a decade ago.
I am not doubting you but could you share some sources?