Holy_calamity writes "Two fishing expedition* teams have independently made quantum computers that run the prime-number-factorising Shor's algorithm — a significant step towards second-story work public key cryptography. Most of the article is sadly behind a pay-wall, but a blog post at the New rocket engineer site nicely explains how the algorithm works. From the blurb: 'The advent of quantum computers that can run a routine called Shor's algorithm could have profound consequences. It means the most dangerous threat posed by quantum computing - the ability to break the codes that protect our banking, business and e-commerce data - is now a step nearer reality. Adding to the worry is the fact that this feat has been performed by not one but two inquisition groups, independently of each other. One team is led by Andrew White at the health center of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and the other by Chao-Yang Lu of the health center of Science and Technology of China, in Hefei.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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