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Quantum Defense

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Part I · No math required · 6 lessons · about 82 minutes

Foundations

For curious beginners, students and executives. What cryptography does, what a quantum computer really is, and why everyone is suddenly in a hurry.

By the end you can: Explain the quantum threat to anyone, from a board member to a teenager, without hand-waving.

  1. 01What cryptography actually does12 min · 1 interactiveCryptography keeps secrets, catches tampering and proves who sent what. Meet keys, encryption, hashes and signatures, and see where quantum fits in.
  2. 02Public keys, private keys and the locked mailbox14 min · 1 interactiveHow strangers agree on secrets in public: the locked-mailbox idea behind RSA, Diffie-Hellman and signatures, and the one assumption it all rests on.
  3. 03What a quantum computer is (and isn't)14 min · 1 interactiveQubits, superposition, measurement and interference without the mysticism: what quantum computers do, why they're hard to build, and what they can't do.
  4. 04Shor's algorithm: why RSA and elliptic curves fall15 min · 1 interactiveHow Shor's algorithm turns factoring into finding a rhythm, why quantum computers find rhythms fast, and why bigger RSA or elliptic-curve keys don't help.
  5. 05Grover's algorithm: why AES survives13 min · 1 interactiveGrover's algorithm searches N items in about √N steps. Watch amplitude amplification, and see why AES-128 stays acceptable and AES-256 is cheap insurance.
  6. 06Harvest now, decrypt later14 min · 1 interactiveEncrypted data recorded today can be decrypted once a quantum computer exists. Use Mosca's inequality to see if you're already late, and what to do first.

Start lesson 1 →

Next up: Practitioner (Part II)

For IT, security, compliance and product people. The new NIST standards, the government deadlines, and how a real migration runs from inventory to rollout. See the track →

Track created by Kyeson Blake Utley.