IBM provides tape drive with security against quantum computers cracking
American and Swiss researchers from IBM, with the help of the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica and Radboud University, have secured data on tape storage with algorithms designed to protect against cracking by quantum computers.
When developing a prototype of secure storage that can withstand cracking quantum computers, IBM researchers from Switzerland and the US chose a tape drive, the TS1120 Enterprise Tape Drive. The reason is that this type of storage is still widely used by large organizations for storage for decades. The reason is that the cost of tapes is low while the storage capacity is high. The tape drives naturally already contain a security layer because they are airgapped: as long as the drive does not boot them, the data cannot be read or changed.
The scientists wanted to investigate what is needed to ensure that secure tape storage can still withstand cracking attempts in ten to thirty years’ time. IBM expects that, in that time frame, asymmetric encryption will provide insufficient protection against, for example, the advent of the quantum computer. Thanks to their parallel computing power, these computers can decompose large numbers into prime factors considerably faster. Public key encryption security relies on prime numbers. The question is whether and if so when a working quantum computer can be ready for this, but at IBM they think that this could be the case in ten to thirty years. IBM itself is one of the companies worldwide that is advanced in research into quantum computers.
To protect public key cryptography against quantum cracking, IBM has developed two lattice-based cryptosystems, together with ENS Lyon, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica and Radboud University. These algorithms use a grid and the shortest vector problem for protection. These are Kyber, an algorithm intended to securely ‘encapsulate’ keys, and Dilithium for secure digital signatures. The company groups the algorithms under what it calls ‘Crystals’, CRYptographic Suite for Algebraic LatticeS. Both are candidates to be designated by the NIST as the standard for so-called post-quantum cryptography.
IBM has added security to the TS1120 via a firmware update and reports that the software may be released for existing tape drives in the future. The prototype is probably partly intended to demonstrate that the security can be used in practice, in order to strengthen the candidacy of Kyber and Dilithium in NIST standardization.
You can read more about post quantum cryptography in the background article The threat of quantum computers and the need for resistant encryption.