“The phantom of the quantum computer is keeping academia and the IT industry on high alert,” said Thomas Pöppelmann from Infineon’s chip card and security division.
“We are proud to be the first to transfer PQC onto contactless smart cards. Our challenges comprised the small chip size and limited memory capacity to store and execute such a complex algorithm as well as the transaction speed.”
According to the company, quantum computer attacks on today’s cryptography are expected to become reality within the next 15 to 20 years. Once available, quantum computers could solve certain calculations much faster than today’s computers, threatening even best currently known security algorithms such as RSA and ECC.
Various internet standards like Transport Layer Security, S/MIME or PGP/ GPG use cryptography based on RSA or ECC to protect data communication with smart cards, computers, servers or industrial control systems.
