“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

"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

"Many crypto-systems considered robust have been broken after a certain amount of time (between 10-20 years).  ... We need to build crypto-systems that offer long term security, for example for protecting financial and medical information (medical information such as our DNA may be sensitive information with impact on our children, our grandchildren and beyond)."

“Build-in Security: Ensure that security is considered and built into the design of new infrastructure, so that our critical assets are protected from the start and more resilient to naturally-occurring and deliberate threats throughout their life-cycle."

Obama-Biden Plan, Agenda: Homeland Security, December 2008

"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."

"Some physicists predicted that within the next 10 to 20 years quantum computers will be built that are sufficiently powerful to implement Shor’s ideas and to break all existing public key schemes. Thus we need to look ahead to a future of quantum computers, and we need to prepare the cryptographic world for that future.”

Prof Seth Lloyd of MIT, MIT Review 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 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

"One should not assume that stakeholders do not care about their security merely because they do not understand the consequences of certain actions. The perception of risk can vary significantly from actual risk and, in the short term, convenience may lead some early adopters to make hazardous decisions."

"Even a relatively small quantum computer, one that had a few tens of thousands of qubits, could consider so many different values at once that it would be able to break all known [ed: RSA, D&H, ECC, AES-128] codes commonly used for secure Internet communication.”

Prof Seth Lloyd of MIT, MIT Review 2008

“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

“So the threat to cryptography is well understood due to work by Peter Shor and others. A symmetric algorithm like AES or others standard crypto processes is cut (of) key-size in half, which is a dramatic reduction. ... For key management purposes, against the RSA and the Diffie-Hellman and stuff, they flat-line under a quantum computer.”

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

"Unfortunately, the security issues of a technology near the end of its lifetime are typically overlooked.  The best known example is that of cryptographic keys and algorithms which may need to offer in some cases security for 50 to 100 years."

“Systems built without requirements cannot fail; They merely offer surprises. Usually unpleasant!

Robert Morris, former Chief Scientist of the US National Security Agency (NSA), National Computer Security Center, 1995

"The security of the digital world has become a fundamental stake for the citizen with respect to his individual freedom ..., for the company with respect to the protection of its computerized industrial assets, ..., and for the state with respect to the reliability of operations and the reduction in the vulnerability of large and critical infrastructures ...”