Negative Repercussions
The announcement that Terra Quantum, a Switzerland-based startup and pioneer of post-quantum cryptography, has released details of its research demonstrating a weakness in post-quantum cryptography which could have negative repercussions for the security of our online banking details and private messages.
The good news in all of this is they have a solution: an unbreakable Boltzmann-Planck-protected superfast protocol for the safe transmission of private data.
Terra Quantum’s breakthrough, which you can read about here, just highlights the problems we face in the future if such solutions and protocols are not found.
This bodes well for startups within the post-quantum cryptography sector, like Sixscape Communications, a Singapore-based cryptographic authentication and communications company “focused on digital certificate-based security across email, voice/video/chat communications, IoT and password-less authentication”.
Sixscape Communications
Founded in 2014 by chief scientist Lawrence Hughes and former CEO Victor Tang, Sixscape Communications’ products range from the ‘Suite’ series of Email Security, Secure Authentication, IoT Security, Unified Communications to identity and authentication platform IDcentral and the SixscapeDNS offering, a secure FreeBSD-based DNS server.
The company’s technology includes public key infrastructure (PKI), identity registration protocol (IRP), IPv6, and DNSSEC. However, seeing as at TQD we’re interested in all things “quantum information science”, it’s the company’s quantum IP that is of special interest to us.
“Currently intractable computational problems that protect widely-deployed cryptosystems, such as RSA and Elliptic Curve-based schemes, are expected to become solvable. This means that quantum computers have the potential to eventually break most secure communications on the planet.”
— Rafael Misoczki, cryptography engineer at Google
Sixscape is now “working with various CAs and other vendors who are creating these quantum-safe algorithms for use in digital certificates, digital signatures and encryption, [they] will be supporting these algorithms and certificates in [their] products in the near future”.
The man responsible for all this is Lawrence Hughes. Before founding Sixscape, he was the co-founder and CTO of Cipher Trust. The inventor of Identity Registration Protocol (IRP) and SixChat protocol, he is also the co-chair of the IPv6 Forum Singapore. An expert in both cryptographic and IPv6 technologies, Hughes graduated with a BA in mathematics from Florida State University.
Dean Bell is the current CEO.
Since 2014, Sixscape has raised a total of $1.6 million in funding over two rounds, the last funding coming from a Series A round back in 2016.
Quantum computers are improving all the time and pose an existential threat to present encryption methods. Terra Quantum’s claims are enough proof of that. One day — sooner, rather than later — future quantum attacks will easily break cryptographic algorithms like asymmetric key (AES) and public/private key (RSA) protocols currently used. But with companies such as Sixscape Communications finding ways to protect us, we may just be in safe hands.
If you found this article to be informative, you can explore more current quantum news here, exclusives, interviews, and podcasts.
