TL;DR
- Quantum computers threaten to make existing encryption systems insecure.
- Ahead of their rise, Google is working to harden Android with Post-Quantum Cryptography.
- The first PQC changes will arrive in the next Android 17 beta.
For more than the past three decades now, powerful encryption has been keeping the internet and the systems connected to it private and secure. That’s all built on complicated math problems that are designed to only work one way: Know the right key, and you can compute the answer, but it’s so complicated to solve without the key that it might as well be impossible. At least, that used to be the case, but quantum computers are about to change everything. Luckily for you and the security of your smartphone, Google is getting out ahead of this nascent threat.
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