Europol Warns Crypto Wallets Are 'Primary Risk' for Quantum Attacks

In brief

• Europol, the European Union's law enforcement agency, published two reports Wednesday urging the crypto industry and policymakers to prepare now for quantum computing threats.
• Its cybercrime center found that wallet keys are the primary point of exposure, while the hash functions securing blockchains remain largely resistant to quantum attacks.
• A study cited by Europol estimates that making every Bitcoin output quantum-safe would require at least 76 days of cumulative network downtime.

EU law enforcement agency Europol published two reports Wednesday urging organizations, policymakers and the cryptocurrency industry to begin preparing now for quantum computers capable of breaking widely used encryption.

The first, Quantum Computing and Cryptocurrencies, produced by Europol's European Cybercrime Centre, identifies cryptocurrency wallets as "the primary point of exposure to quantum threats." Wallets rely on a pair of keys: a private key that authorizes transactions and a public key the network uses to verify them.

A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could derive a private key from an exposed public key, letting an attacker spend funds without authorization, the report says, a moment that’s often referred to as Q-Day.