New quantum-computing advances heighten threat to elliptic curve cryptosystems

Two recent whitepapers say breaking ECC requires far fewer quantum resources than earlier estimates.

One paper reports neutral-atom qubits could break ECC-256 in about 10 days using under 30,000 physical qubits.

A Google paper claims ECC-based blockchains could be broken in under nine minutes with a 20x resource cut.

Neither paper has been peer-reviewed, and researchers say progress on CRQC is continuing.