Cloudflare said Tuesday it plans to issue quantum-proof TLS certificates, making it one of the first authorities to issue such certificates, which use a form of cryptography that is widely believed to withstand attacks from quantum computers.
The Internet infrastructure provider said it will use an open source platform that issues both classic TLS certificates and a post-quantum equivalent known as Merkle Tree Certificates. The hybrid certificates will be free to both paying and non-paying users. To help build the massive system and establish ubiquity across the sprawling TLS ecosystem, Cloudflare will be acquiring an already trusted certificate root from CA GlobalSign. Cloudflare said the move will let millions of websites use post-quantum certificates at the flip of a switch and without incurring any increased performance overhead.
Fundamental architectural changes ahead
Cloudflare’s plans are part of a major overhaul in the web public key infrastructure (WebPKI) required to make website encryption and authentication safe for the coming post-quantum age. A major challenge is using quantum-proof signatures that can be easily transmitted during web requests and recorded in transparency logs to ensure counterfeit certificates aren't assigned to websites. The makeover will take years to complete, because it requires the work of an untold number of engineers who design operating systems, browsers, certificate authorities, and Internet infrastructure.
ArsTechnica is reporting on a “new” attack against RSA, one that bypasses factoring.
First, this attack isn’t new. The original research is from 2007. What is new is the implementation.
Second, it is a forgery attack. It allows an attacker to forge digital signatures. It does not recover the private key from the public key.
Third, the attack only works against pure signatures. That is, signatures without any formatting or padding. This is not generally how we use RSA in practice.
Fourth, speed is all relative. This is not a polynomial-time algorithm; it’s a subexponential-time algorithm. But it is somewhat faster than factoring. The authors were able to forge messages for 1024-bit RSA with 1380 CPU core-years (over five real-world months).
The authors have a webpage that explains the context much better than the article. And here’s the paper.
However, the most astonishing thing about this break is that the GPT6 Astra did it entirely on its own. Carter Leffer only directed GPT6 Astra to see if it could break any of the unbroken Enigma messages published on the Crypto Cellar Research web page. After analysing the unbroken messages on the website, it decided that the most promising message was Nr. 172, MVUEH and it also quickly suspected that the plaintext of Nr. 173, SIPVX, might be related to the plaintext of the unbroken MVUEH message. After trying many different approaches, GPT6 Astra focused on using the repeated place name ROSENOW ROSENOW as a crib. After developing the necessary Python and C++ software for an Enigma simulator and an Enigma Bombe, GPT6 Astra started a thorough break with the ROSENOW crib, which in the end resulted in the correct key and plaintext for the MVUEH message being found.
We are still analysing the GPT6 Astra logs to see exactly how it executed the break. And we are discovering amazing details.
Jacob Tsimerman, a recent recipient of the Fields Medal, believes that higher mathematics can help curb the dangers of runaway artificial intelligence.
Some of the world's leading democracies are pushing governments and companies to start preparing for post-quantum cryptography before quantum computers become powerful enough to break the encryption systems that protect global digital infrastructure today.
In a joint advisory released Thursday, the G7 Cybersecurity Working Group and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said organizations should begin their transition to post-quantum cryptography now, rather than waiting until cryptographically relevant quantum computers (CRQCs) are available to threat actors.
Why the Post-Quantum Cryptography Shift Cannot Wait
The publication, titled "Preparing for the Post-Quantum Era: A Call to Action," warns that the quantum computing threat is no longer a distant concern. While the exact timeline for CRQC development remains uncertain, the working group said recent technological advances suggest such machines could emerge sooner than expected, putting widely used public-key cryptography mechanisms at risk.
One of the most immediate dangers is a tactic known as "harvest now, decrypt later," where malicious actors intercept and store encrypted data today with the intention of decrypting it once a CRQC becomes available. This poses a serious risk to governmental records, sensitive personal data, and trade or business secrets that require long-term confidentiality.
The advisory also cautions that CRQCs could eventually be used to target authentication mechanisms, allowing bad actors to impersonate trusted entities, forge data, or compromise equipment. Because supply chain vulnerabilities can cascade, a single organization's delay in adopting post-quantum cryptography could expose entire sectors to compromise.
According to the report, organizations that fail to act may also face business consequences beyond security risk, including exclusion from public procurement contracts and loss of competitive advantage.
Five Priorities for the PQC Transition
The G7 Cybersecurity Working Group outlined five priority areas to guide the global shift toward post-quantum cryptography:
Raising awareness — Many organizations still view the quantum threat as a distant or purely technical issue. The group called for awareness campaigns, technical guidance, and workforce upskilling to reframe it as an economic and business risk.
Developing national strategies — Countries are encouraged to build strategies that ensure an adequate supply of quantum-safe hardware and software while encouraging adoption, integrating the effort into broader digital privacy and security policies.
Advancing research and development — Governments should fund research programs and support pilot projects and testbeds to help organizations test and refine their transition to post-quantum cryptography.
Building public-private partnerships — Collaboration between government, industry, and academia is seen as key to developing domestic expertise, lowering transition costs, and sharing playbooks and case studies across sectors.
Integrating PQC into cybersecurity requirements — The group recommends treating post-quantum cryptography adoption as a natural evolution of cryptographic best practice, and embedding requirements into public procurement to push both vendors and organizations toward quantum-safe systems.
The advisory emphasizes that the shift to post-quantum cryptography cannot be solved by individual organizations in isolation. Instead, it calls for early engagement, coordinated planning, and informed decision-making across public and private sectors worldwide.
Tackling the risks that the impending quantum computing era poses to current cryptographic systems... requires a coordinated global effort to transition to PQC," the report states, adding that public and private organizations must act now to safeguard confidential data, supply chains, and critical systems.
The document was jointly published by cybersecurity authorities from Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and France's ANSSI, with participation from the European Commission and support from the EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA).
Post-quantum cryptography is now one pip-install away for the entire Python ecosystem. With funding from the Sovereign Tech Agency, we implemented support for ML-KEM, the NIST-standard key-establishment primitive, and ML-DSA, the NIST-standard digital-signature primitive, in pyca/cryptography.
Remember, the reason to do this now is because there’s no emergency. And because you will make your systems crypto agile, which is always a good idea.
Really interesting piece of cryptographic history:
In November 2023, a large cache of his wartime papers—nicknamed the “Bayley papers”—was auctioned in London for almost half a million U.S. dollars. The previously unknown cache contains many sheets in Turing’s own handwriting, telling of his top-secret “Delilah” engineering project from 1943 to 1945. Delilah was Turing’s portable voice-encryption system, named after the biblical deceiver of men. There is also material written by Bayley, often in the form of notes he took while Turing was speaking. It is thanks to Bayley that the papers survived: He kept them until he died in 2020, 66 years after Turing passed away.
France is accelerating its transition to post-quantum encryption:
France’s cybersecurity agency ANSSI said on Tuesday it would stop certifying security products that lack quantum-resistant encryption, a move that will force government bodies and critical operators to shift away from older systems.
Samih Souissi, ANSSI’s chief of staff, said at the France Quantum conference that the agency would halt such certifications from 2027, and that businesses should be buying only quantum-safe products by 2030.
ANSSI approval is required for use in French government agencies and critical infrastructure, making the policy a de facto phase-out of older encryption.
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