The Quantum Sky Is Falling! Understanding the Quantum Threat to Network Security

Confidentiality is a fundamental pillar of information security. In sensitive deployments, such as those involving federal governments, military and defense agencies, and large financial institutions, the demand for confidentiality extends well beyond the typical 5 to 10 years, often reaching 20 years or more.

The same also applies to telecom operators and enterprises providing services to any of these critical agencies. With the existing classical computers, this requirement of forward secrecy for encryption could be met easily as breaking the asymmetric cryptography (deriving the private key for a given public key) would take well beyond the timelines needed to maintain the data confidentiality.

However, this will change with the advent of Quantum Computers, and specifically once we have Cryptographically Relevant Quantum Computers (CRQC) available. The time taken to derive the private key for a given public key can go from a few years to a matter of few days or hours. This would mean, the 10 – 20 years’ timeframe of confidentiality requirement for sensitive network deployments can no longer be met with the existing cryptographic algorithms.

Even though we don’t have a practical CRQC available yet, due to the nature of Harvest Now, Decrypt Later (HNDL) attacks where attackers can just tap the sensitive flows today and could decrypt them later, federal / government agencies, financial institutions, etc. must start acting now to be ready for this impending Quantum threat to encryption. The same has been highlighted in the most recent Executive Order by the US government too.

In addition to the threat to key negotiation for transport security protocols like MACsec / IPsec, there are other aspects of network security that would be impacted with the advent of Quantum Computers as listed below:

1. Image Signing: Digital signatures would be impacted which would mean new Quantum safe signatures must be adopted to sign the NOS (Network Operating System) and other binaries.
2. Secure Boot Process: The entire Secure boot process must continue to be trusted which would mean adopting Quantum safe signatures to each of the boot time artifacts.
3. Runtime Integrity: Once the devices are booted, the run time measures ensure the trusted state of the NOS like Linux IMA (Integrity Measurement Architecture) must adopt Quantum safe algorithms.
4. Operational Security: All the operational security features relying on SSH, TLS, etc. must adopt the newly approved PQC algorithms.
5. Ensuring Hardware Trustworthiness: Identities including cryptographic hardware identities like Cisco SUDI need to adopt Quantum safe algorithms.
6. Hashing: Any security feature that uses hashing must start supporting at least SHA-384 or SHA-512 hashes to be Quantum Safe.

As seen above, even before operators enable transport security protocols like MACsec or IPsec, the fact that they have a router or a switch running in their network would mean they need to start evaluating the transition to Quantum Safe solutions. With such a wider scope of the threat, the transition journey must start now given the number of steps involved (shown below) in upgrading the devices to a Quantum safe solution.

Unlike selective upgrades of network devices based on what features are needed in the field, the Quantum security threat would require all the devices to be upgraded. The impact is much greater when it comes to network devices managing critical utilities that are often deployed in remote locations where there could be operational challenges for the upgrades.

In addition to this, Cisco routers support features like chipo guard, which help detect tampering of CPU or NPU during transit. This is made possible with Cisco’s Trust Anchor module (TAm) chip that is present on every device. Cisco’s Secure Boot process verifies if the router still has the same CPU or NPU when it was shipped from a Cisco facility.

This kind of unique hardware integrity measure must also be made Quantum safe to maintain the same level of trust in the Quantum Computing era. Any new hardware currently in design phase and expected to ship in CY’2027 or beyond, will need to be in the field for another 10 – 15 years at least. So, it becomes necessary to incorporate Quantum safe measures in the hardware too as there is more chance of these devices being susceptible to the Quantum Computing threat during their deployment timelines. This is where network equipment vendors, silicon vendors, network operators, standards bodies and the end users must come together now to start planning for the transition to Quantum safe security solutions.

Lastly, in my previous blog post on Quantum threat to network security, the threat to transport protocol security was highlighted along with the available solutions from Cisco. So far, the solutions to address the threat to key negotiation were centered around various forms of Quantum Key Distribution methods. However, with the recent publication of PQC (Post Quantum Cryptography) algorithms by NIST, it’s time to implement these algorithms natively for key negotiation.

Cisco is actively working on Quantum Safe Security solutions and is also involved in various standards bodies working on Quantum Safe Cryptography solutions. More details on this can be found on our Post-Quantum Cryptography trust center page.

There will be sessions from Cisco speakers at the upcoming Quantum Networks Summit on this topic. Please check out the agenda and join us for the tutorial session along with the session on Cisco’s plans on Quantum readiness for encryption.

We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with Cisco Secure on social!

Cisco Security Social Channels

Instagram
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Share: