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 ...

Peter Shor didn’t set out to break the internet. But an algorithm he developed in the mid-1990s threatened to do just that. In a landmark paper, Shor showed how a hypothetical computer that exploited ...

Whether we realize it or not, cryptography is the fundamental building block on which our digital lives are based. Without sufficient cryptography and the inherent trust that it engenders, every ...

Scientists at IBM's Almaden Research Center have performed the world's most complicated quantum-computer calculation to date. They caused a billion billion custom-designed molecules in a test tube to ...

Every online bank transfer, private message and Bitcoin transaction rests on the assumption that some math problems are practically impossible to solve. Quantum computers threaten to flip that ...

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 ...

Building on a landmark algorithm, researchers propose a way to make a smaller and more noise-tolerant quantum factoring circuit for cryptography. The most recent email you sent was likely encrypted ...