Independent Researcher Breaks Record with Quantum Attack on Elliptic Curve Cryptography

Project Eleven has announced the winner of its Q-Day Prize, a one Bitcoin bounty awarded to an independent researcher who successfully broke a 15-bit elliptic curve key on a publicly accessible quantum computer. This achievement marks the largest public demonstration of a quantum attack on elliptic curve cryptography, with potential implications for Bitcoin and other digital assets secured by this method.

The winning submission came from Giancarlo Lelli, an independent researcher who used a variant of Shor's algorithm to derive a private key from its public key across a search space of 32,767. This is a significant advancement in the field of quantum cryptography, demonstrating that quantum attacks on elliptic curve keys are becoming increasingly feasible.

The research highlights the growing threat of quantum attacks and the need for migration to post-quantum cryptography. Project Eleven has emphasized the urgency of this issue, citing the decreasing resource requirements for these types of attacks and the potential risks to digital assets secured by elliptic curve cryptography. With approximately 6.9 million Bitcoin sitting in wallets whose public keys are visible on-chain, exposing them to quantum attack, the stakes are high.