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Technology

Quantum supremacy: Will quantum computers break the internet for good?

By Donna Lu

28 October 2019

Padlock to represent computer security breach

Quantum computers could break some encryption methods

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Google’s claims of quantum supremacy have some people worried that the internet is now broken. Within hours of the news breaking, US presidential candidate Andrew Yang tweeted that “It means, among many other things, that no code is uncrackable.”

But Yang isn’t quite right. Although there is reason to believe that quantum computers will pose a risk to encryption, there is still a long way to go before that happens.

The internet uses encryption to ensure that sensitive data, such as bank details …

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