How to Break XOR Encryption with just 20 Million USD of Quantum Computer!
or A Worked Example of Grover's Algorithm, unnecessarily attacking XOR encryption This is an introduction to utilising a quantum computer to break encryption, but using XOR as our example. XOR is a very simple algorithm, but a relevant one still today (even if it is more from a theoretical than practical point of view, for the most part). As such, it forms avery very nice, easily accessible example for demonstrating how to break XOR encryption NB - An interactive version! For those who would prefer an interactive version where you can run the code in this post, please see this Google Colab Notebook! Although we aren't using Google's Cirq library, the IBM Qiskit code still works! So who is this for? This introduction to Grover's Search Algorithm is designed for those who know a little about encryption, aren't phased by a few bits of fairly straightforward mathematics (there really isn't much - we've kept it to a minimum!) and is curious to get an insi