Researchers now estimate that cracking current crypto-security systems may require as few as 500,000 qubits, a reduction by a factor of 20 from previous assessments. This finding significantly shortens the timeline for potential breaches affecting sensitive infrastructure like satellite controls, power grids, and financial institutions. The work by Ryan Babbush of Google Quantum AI and colleagues reveals that approximately 90% of current crypto-schemes rely on solving complicated polynomial equations based on elliptic curve cryptography, rather than factoring large integers. “Quantum technologies have been thought of as ‘over a decade away’ for a long time,” says Stephanie Simmons, a quantum researcher from Simon Fraser University in Canada, who was not involved in the new research. Reduced Qubit Count Accelerates Quantum Hacking Threat The threshold for cracking widely used encryption may be significantly lower than previously thought; new analysis indicates that approximately 500,000 qubits are now estimated to be sufficient to compromise current crypto-security systems, a reduction by a factor of 20 from earlier projections. The team verified the efficacy of their hacking algorithm with a zero-knowledge proof, allowing a cryptographer to independently reconstruct and validate the full algorithm, now publicly available. This method secures software authentication, electronic passports, and financial transactions for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, systems previously thought safe from near-term quantum threats. A classical computer would require billions of years to breach these systems, but Babbush’s team demonstrates a potential quantum shortcut, requiring a superconducting quantum computer with around 500,000 qubits and 80 million gates to complete the operation in under ten minutes. This speed is concerning because it could jeopardize cryptocurrency transactions that rely on the short-term public sharing of secret codes. Separate research from Oratomic, a quantum computing company, suggests an alternative path to a quantum hack, estimating that 26,000 physical qubits could achieve the same