The encryption codes that safeguard internet data today won't be secure forever.
Future quantum computers may have the processing power and algorithms to crack them.
Nathan Hamlin, instructor and director of the WSU Math Learning Center, is helping to prepare for this eventuality.
He is the author of a new paper in the Open Journal of Discrete Mathematics that explains how a code he wrote for a doctoral thesis, the Generalized Knapsack Code, could thwart hackers armed with next generation quantum computers.
The paper clarifies misunderstandings about the complex field of public key cryptography and provides a common basis of understanding for the technical experts who will eventually be tasked with designing new internet security systems for the quantum computing age.
"Designing security systems to protect data involves experts from many different fields who all work with numbers differently," Hamlin said. "You are going to have pure and applied mathematicians, computer programmers and engineers all involved in the process at some point. For it to work in real life, all of these people need to have a common language to communicate so that they can make important decisions about how to safeguard online transactions and personal communications in the future."
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