French Startup Alice & Bob Claims RSA‑2048 Could Be Factored in Three Days Using 23 k Qubits
What Happened — Alice & Bob, a Paris‑Boston quantum‑computing startup, announced a new benchmark: using fewer than 23,000 physical “cat” qubits, their architecture can run Shor’s algorithm to factor an RSA‑2048 key in roughly three days. The estimate is ≈ 40 × smaller than Google’s 2025 projection of one‑million qubits. The same team says elliptic‑curve keys protecting blockchains could be broken in about an hour with ~30 k qubits. The claim is based on a combination of error‑resistant cat qubits, tighter error‑correcting codes, and an optimized version of Shor’s algorithm. No public demonstration has been released; the numbers come from internal simulations and hardware‑level modeling.
Why It Matters for Trust & Control Assurance — The prospect of practical quantum‑enabled key factorisation forces organisations to validate that their cryptographic controls are algorithm‑agile and that key‑management processes can migrate to post‑quantum schemes without breaking audit evidence.
Who Is Affected — Financial services, healthcare, cloud SaaS, e‑commerce, and any sector that relies on RSA‑2048 or ECC for TLS, VPN, code signing, or blockchain transactions.
Recommended Actions
- Inventory every system that uses RSA‑2048/ECC and map those assets to the relevant control objective (cryptographic algorithm lifecycle).
- Validate that key‑management policies include algorithm‑agility clauses and documented migration paths to post‑quantum algorithms.
- Begin collecting evidence of current crypto controls (key lengths, algorithm approvals, rotation schedules) to demonstrate readiness for a future audit.
Technical Notes – The attack vector is a future quantum‑computing capability leveraging Shor’s algorithm on cat‑qubit hardware; no CVE or current exploit exists. The claim hinges on error‑resistant physical qubits and more efficient error‑correction, reducing the qubit count from millions to tens of thousands. Source: DataBreachToday