README.md

Can Quantum computers break RSA encryption ?

---

I created this repository to answer my curiosity after watching Vertitasium's video How Quantum Computers Break The Internet... Starting Now. It contains tools to generate RSA keys, encrypt/decrypt messages and "break" keys. Obviously, breaking keys only works for small ones, otherwise we are truly in danger. For this purpose, I implemented Shor's algorithm which is not the best algorithm in the context of our laptops, but in terms of quantum computing, the encryption will break once a capable quantum computer is built. This repository is for educational purposes, if you want to understand how public and private keys are generated using RSA, how to encrypt/decrypt messages or how our keys may be broken one day 🫠

If you are more interested about the topic you can refer to this medium article

How to use

First you need to clone the repository or download the source code. Refer to requirements.txt for dependencies.

This a command line tool, that contains 4 functions that you can choose from using the action argument :

1. Generate keys

Use this function to generate public and private keys. It is possible to specify the number of bits of the generated keys and if you want to save them to a json file. (Note that saving them to a file is necessary to use the other functions.)

Command :

python main.py -a generate_keys -b number_of_bits -f name_of_file

Example (without saving to a file) :

python main.py -a generate_keys -b 1024

Example (saving to a file) :

python main.py -a generate_keys -b 1024 -f tmp.json

2. Encrypt message

After the generation of a public and private key, use this function to encrypt a message (string). It reads keys from the json file specified in the command. The output is a list of encrypted characters that is automatically appended to the same json file.

Command :

python main.py -a encrypt -m message_to_encrypt -f keys_file

Example :

python main.py -a encrypt -m "cracking RSA" -f tmp.json

3. Decrypt message

Once we have an encrypted message we can decrypt it using this function. Note that we need to specify the json file that contains the private key and message.

Command :

python main.py -a decrypt -f name_of_file

Example :

python main.py -a decrypt -f tmp.json

4. Breaking keys

By specifying crack as the action to use with the script, the script will return the private key for the public key that is contained in the json file. Note that the time needed starts to gets annoying starting from 32 bits.

Command :

python main.py -a crack -f name_of_file

Example :

python main.py -a crack -f tmp.json

Feel Free to contribute

In the open source community contributing is the fuel ⚡⚡ Feel free to give me your suggestion by opening issues or by pull requets !

I searched everywhere how can I convert public and private keys from (e,n) and (d,n) respectively to the format we get when we use ssh-keygen in the terminal. If you happen to have an idea, I'll be glad to hear from you 😊