GENEVA, Switzerland— At the same time governments around the world are exploring or actively pursuing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), the World Economic Forum (WEF) has issued a warning concerning their potential vulnerability to decryption attacks from quantum computers.
“Quantum computers are largely still in the experimental phase,” Cointelegraph reported. “Various proofs-of-concept exist, and a handful of laboratories claim to have solved bespoke problems with quantum systems that traditional, binary computers couldn’t solve within a reasonable amount of time. But for the most part, there’s still a bit of time between now and ‘Q-Day,’ the hypothetical point at which bad actors will be able to crack standard encryption with quantum computers.”
While threats to encryption would ostensibly affect every industry, the digital asset sector faces one of the largest reckonings, the report stated. “This outsized threat has the potential to break CBDCs, according to the WEF.
The WEF, in its post wrote in a recent blog post that “central banks must embed cryptographic agility into CBDC systems to defend against quantum cyberattacks targeting payment infrastructure.”
Three Specific Threats
According to the report, the WEF identified three specific threats to CBDCs that quantum computing could pose. Quantum computers could be used to break “in motion encryption,” thus allowing bad actors to intercept transactions as they occur.
“The blog post also cites identity impersonation as a threat vector, presumably meaning using quantum systems to break encryption protecting identity verification systems so that spoofed identity assets can be inserted,” Cointelegraph said.
Introducing HNPL
Finally, the WEF identified the most commonly cited threat posed by quantum computers: “Harvest now, decrypt later.”
“Much like it sounds, in this attack vector, bad actors steal encrypted data and store it for decryption by a future quantum system later,” Cointelegraph explained.
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