AES-128 is safe against quantum computers. SHA-256 is safe against quantum computers. No symmetric key sizes have to change as part of the post-quantum transition. This is a near-consensus opinion amongst experts and standardization bodies and it needs to propagate to the rest of the IT community. The rest of this article backs up this claim both technically and with references to relevant authorities.

Original article: https://words.filippo.io/128-bits/

TL;DR: https://hackaday.com/2026/04/25/quantum-computers-are-not-a-threat-to-128-bit-symmetric-keys/

  • partofthevoice@lemmy.zip
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    15 hours ago

    Good for security. What does this mean for quantum computing, though? Does this mean that it’s not as powerful as we thought it would have been?

    • ranzispa@mander.xyz
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      13 hours ago

      Quantum computing has already been destroyed by AlphaFold.

      I work in the computational chemistry field and I’d really love a working quantum computing solution to that kind of problems, but since the ML solutions came up most research in that direction stopped and it does not seem like there is any nearing solution in the world of quantum computing.

      I’m not talking about qubits numbers or amount of errors themselves in the system but about the complete lack of algorithms that can handle the problem. Most of what I’ve seen is handling childlike problems that a single core CPU will do better and quicker anyway. It really does not feel like all the promises that have been done are anywhere near to coming true.

      When I speak with people working in the field they’re like: sure in a few years if we can get better computers we’ll be able to handle a few hundred atoms at a time (all without any actual working methodology and assuming that will be developed), however we are more commonly talking about hundreds of thousands of atoms… There’s little hope on my part that anything useful will come out of there soon. However, I do really hope it does: quantum computing would be a huge revolution for chemistry if it works as advertised.

    • tombo@nord.pub
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      14 hours ago

      I think it means that there was probably some misunderstandings of how a qbit would do calculations or execute code.

    • db2@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      As expected the same dipshits pushing AI also lied about what quantum computing even is.

      I’m imagining if I had said this even a month ago even though it’s what I’ve thought for years.