21.02.2018

Invitation to a talk: Gavin Brennen, Wednesday Feb. 21th 2018, 3:00 pm at the IQOQI Seminar Room

Quantum attacks on Bitcoin and classical countermeasures

Bitcoin and its cousins are decentralized digital currencies secured by cryptography. There are now over 1000 such currencies with market capitalization of several hundred billion US dollars, and while they are extremely volatile, some number of them are likely here to stay.

With the development of quantum technology it is natural to ask how secure is Bitcoin to future quantum computer attacks. I'll introduce the basics of a Bitcoin transaction and describe the threat of quantum attacks on Proof of Work based mining and to digital signatures, as well as how to defend against them.

Joint work with Divesh Aggarwal, Troy Lee, Miklos Santha, Marco Tomamichel 

arXiv:1710.10377

 

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