Google has once again ignited lively debates about the future of digital security with its latest research, which suggests that the hardware capable of breaking commonly used encryption methods may arrive sooner than expected. A study led by Craig Gidney, published on the arXiv preprint server, indicates that a quantum computer with fewer than a million noisy qubits could potentially crack a 2048-bit RSA encryption key—a standard in cybersecurity—in less than a week.
