When the Robert Redford film Sneakers hit theaters in 1992, most moviegoers had never heard of the Internet. They’d have guessed “World Wide Web” was a horror film involving spiders. And nobody knew ...

A quantum computer algorithm that is used to find the prime factors in an encryption key. Created by applied mathematician Peter Shor in the mid-1990s, Shor's algorithm may be used to break the codes ...

Every online bank transfer, private message and Bitcoin transaction rests on the assumption that some math problems are ...

Initiative aims to publish a formally verified implementation of Shor’s quantum factoring algorithm with relevance to cryptography and other high-value domains ...

One of the most well-established and disruptive uses for a future quantum computer is the ability to crack encryption. A new algorithm could significantly lower the barrier to achieving this. Despite ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Peter Shor is a poet. Here is a limerick he ...

In 1994, a mathematician figured out how to make a quantum computer do something that no ordinary classical computer could. The work revealed that, in principle, a machine based on the rules of ...

Two groups of scientists have separately implemented computing schemes that threaten the assumptions made in modern encryption technology. Now, we don't pretend to understand the quantum mechanics ...