“The software security industry today is at about the same stage as the auto industry was in 1930" ... "it looks fast, goes nice but in an accident you die.” ... "The major shortfall is absence of assurance (or safety) mechanisms in software. If my car crashed as often as my computer does, I would be dead by now."

Brian Snow, Former Technical Director of the US National Security Agency (NSA), "We need assurance!", 1999-2008

"In the medium term, we need to be prepared for the eventuality that large quantum computers could be built: this would require an upgrade of most symmetric cryptographic algorithms and a completely new generation of public-key algorithms."

SecurIST, “D3.3 – ICT Security & Dependability Research beyond 2010: Final Strategy”, January 2007

"Many applications stay in use for much longer than anticipated, but during the extended lifetime they will be functioning in an environment for which they have not been designed, resulting in completely new vulnerabilities and risks."

“Advances have often been done in steps, and beyond approximately 10 years into the future, the general feeling among ECRYPT partners is that recommendations made today should be assigned a rather small confidence level, perhaps in particular for asymmetric primitives.”

European ECRYPT Network of Excellence, “Yearly Report on Algorithms and Key Lengths (2007-2008)", 2008

“a significant breakthrough in quantum computation would spell doom for all these systems (ECC-192 or RSA-2048).”

European Network of Excellence for Cryptography, "D.AZTEC.2 Alternatives to RSA", July 2005

“The time needed to factor an RSA integer is the same order as the time needed to use that same integer as modulus for a single RSA encryption.   In other words, it takes no more time to break RSA on a quantum computer (up to a multiplicative constant) than to use it legitimately on a classical computer.”

Professor Gilles Brassard,  "Quantum Information Processing: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", 1997

“In the next five years we will counter many 'hacker' attacks but we will not be safe from Nation States and other large entities”

Brian Snow, Former Technical Director of the US National Security Agency (NSA), "We need assurance!", 1999-2008

“It's not good enough to have a system where everyone (using the system) must be trusted, it must also be made robust against insiders!”

Robert Morris, former Chief Scientist of the US National Security Agency (NSA), National Computer Security Center, "Crypto '95 invited talks by R. Morris and A. Shamir", 1995

“We are a cyber nation. The U.S. information infrastructure--including telecommunications and computer networks and systems and the data that reside on them--is critical to virtually every aspect of modern life. This information infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable to exploitation, disruption, and destruction by a growing array of adversaries.”

The National Coordination Office (NCO) for Networking Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD), Federal Register: December 30, 2008 (Volume 73, Number 250).

"The future ability of quantum computers might be a decade or two away, their future ability to break public-key cryptography has important implications for the encryption of highly sensitive information today. For these applications, we must already design new public-key cryptosystems and one-way functions that are immune to quantum cryptanalysis."

ARDA, Report of the Quantum Information Science and Technology Experts Panel, 2004

“New concepts for quantum computer implementations, algorithms, and advances in the theoretical understanding of the physics requirements for quantum computers appear almost weekly in the scientific literature.”

ARDA, Report of the Quantum Information Science and Technology Experts Panel

Public key crypto key exchanges (RSA, D&H, ECC) would be ‘flat-lined’ under a quantum computer attack … "Open Problem”

Brian Snow, Former Technical Director of the US National Security Agency (NSA), Public Key Cryptography 30th Anniversary Conference, Dec 2006

"My colleagues at MIT and I have been building simple quantum computers and executing quantum algorithms since 1996, as have other scientists around the world. Quantum computers work as promised. If they can be scaled up, to thousands or tens of thousands of qubits from their current size of a dozen or so, watch out!”

Prof Seth Lloyd of MIT, MIT Review 2008

"There is a good chance that large quantum computers can be built within the next 20 years.  This would be a nightmare for IT security if there are no fully developed, implemented, and standardized post-quantum signature schemes."

Prof. Johannes Buchmann, et al, “Post-Quantum Signatures”, Oct 2004, Technische Universität Darmstadt

“Given today’s common hardware and software architectural paradigms, operating systems security is a major primitive for secure systems – you will not succeed without it. This area is so important that it needs all the emphasis it can get. It is the current ‘black hole’ of security.”

Brian Snow, Former Technical Director of the US National Security Agency (NSA), "We need assurance!", 1999-2008

"Security and dependability issues typically go along with the life cycle of a technology.  The trend to first deploy a technology and later fix its problems – typically driven by economic motives – is gradually making way for security by design, resulting in improved security at the beginning of the life cycle."

"Given their power to intercept and disrupt secret communications, it is not surprising that quantum computers have the attention of various U.S. government agencies.  The National Security Agency, which supports research in quantum computing, candidly declares that given its interest in keeping U.S. government communications secure, it is loath to see quantum computers built. On the other hand, if they can be built, then it wants to have the first one.”

Prof Seth Lloyd of MIT, MIT Review 2008

"One often hears recommendations for key-sizes of public-key cryptosystems needed to obtain security for 30 years and even 50 years. Anyone wanting a real security of this magnitude should probably take the construction of the quantum computer into consideration."

ECRYPT, “D.PROVI.3 – First Summary Report on Unconditionally Secure Protocols”, January 2005