Chinese scientists are the first in the world to crack cryptocurrency wallet encryption algorithms

A team of researchers from the University of Shanghai has announced the successful implementation of the world’s first effective attack on encryption methods widely used to protect cryptocurrency wallets. To do this, they used the power of a D-Wave protoquantum computer.

The researchers noted that they were able to factorize RSA-protected integers, a key component in breaking encryption algorithms. Scientists have studied the capabilities of D-Wave to solve collision detection problems and build hash functions within the Ising model, which directly affects the quality of the encryption algorithm.

Hash functions are used to create electronic digital signatures, process and store information in databases, and ensure information security. The most famous are MD5 and SHA-1, developed in the late 20th century. Although certain vulnerabilities have been identified in these algorithms, they are still used in many areas and are the basis for more modern encryption methods.

«This is the first time that a real quantum computer has been able to accomplish the task and become a real threat to many structured Substitution-Permutation Network algorithms in use today,» said the researchers from Shanghai University.

Details of the study were not disclosed. However, according to the scientists, with the development of quantum computing, this could become a serious threat to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. «Quantum computers will be able to identify large prime numbers, which are key components of the BTC private key, and it is only a matter of time before effective countermeasures are developed,» they said.

Back in 2020, Google urged security experts to abandon the use of SHA-1 in favor of the SHA-256 algorithm, which is the basis of the Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism in the Bitcoin network BTC $89,839.00 Bitcoin -1.39% Market capitalization $1.78 trillion VOL. 24 hours $1.95 billion .