Quantum Resistant Encryption

My own understanding of Grover is not as solid as I would like for it to be, but I believe that as long as a suitable quantum circuit is built, it would allow brute-force guessing of the master password itself (not necessarily the 256-bit encryption key). In this case, the effective master password entropy would be cut in half, which could be a real problem.

However, it is not a given that quantum cryptography will significantly weaken our current master passwords, even if Grover’s algorithm can be brought to bear. The theory only proves that if the classical search space requires 2N guesses for cracking a password, then a quantum search will reduce the number of required guesses to 2N/2. However, the time to crack depends on the performance of the hardware used, so the classical cracking time (TC) and the post-quantum cracking time (TPQ) would be given by

TC = AC·2N

and

TPQ = APQ·2N/2

where AC and APQ are coefficients that represent the effective hashing rate of a classical and quantum computer respectively (i.e., the time it takes to test a single guess); N is the master password entropy.

Therefore, HNDL attacks will be relevant for AES-protected keys if and only if

APQ « AC·2N/2

Thus, I think the jury is still out on whether this is a realistic threat or not.

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Thanks for the write-up!

If/when that becomes a realistic threat we can take another look.

For now it’s just PQ asymmetric encryption (or rather asymmetric key encapsulation, asymmetric encryption of data should not be used anymore), and (asymmetric) signatures that are on the radar for adding to bitwarden (once standardized).

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This thread has mostly focused/demonstrated Bitwarden’s strong symmetric encryption, and that it has TLS-encrypted asymmetric authentication that is apparently not subject to interception concerns due to hashing as explained above.

Just wanted to update with current data/benchmark that 33% of Cloudflare’s TLS is using Post Quantum Encryption as of Jan, 2025 [1].

Source:

  1. https://radar.cloudflare.com/adoption-and-usage#post-quantum-encryption-adoption