Os impactos das comunicações quânticas sobre a segurança e a defesa cibernética

Abstract

Nowadays, quantum technologies are the focus of attention for most of the developed nations in the world. This area has been considered essential to the maintenance of national sovereignty and determinant to the development of new military capabilities. It would not be interesting if Brazil fell behind in a new technological race, where the technology is still in the intermediate stages of development. Brazil has groups of specialists in many fields of knowledge, such as Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, Computing, and other specialties, which to a greater or lesser extent, are already conducting research focused on quantum technologies. The main difference is the amount of resources received compared to the rest of the world. In terms of cybersecurity and cyber defense, due to its large number of internet users, which is not matched by the same growth in education, the country is target of numerous attacks, which can compromise its cyber sovereignty. With the advent of quantum technologies, particularly quantum computing, the prognosis is even worse. If a quantum computer with sufficient capacity (qubits) to run certain existing algorithms is developed, the encryption used to secure communications on the internet today could be broken within a few hours. In this sense, the present study conducts an analysis of the impacts of adopting quantum communication techniques on cybersecurity and cyber defense, presenting their advantages and disadvantages, compared to other forms of protection of the data transmitted over the internet.