Post Quantum Panic: When Will the Cracking Begin, & Can We Detect it?
K Karagiannis
DEF CON 33 · Day 1 · Main Stage
In a stark and urgent presentation at DEF CON, K Karagiannis, Quantum Computing Services Leader at Pertivity, delivered a sobering assessment of the impending threat posed by quantum computers to current cryptographic standards. Titled "Post Quantum Panic," the talk served as a critical alarm bell, challenging the prevailing, often complacent, timelines for post-quantum cryptography (PQC) migration. Karagiannis, with a background spanning physics and penetration testing, articulated that the long-dreaded "quantum apocalypse" is not a distant, theoretical threat, but an imminent reality, potentially arriving years ahead of official estimations.
AI review
A competent, well-structured PQC threat briefing that synthesizes hardware roadmaps and algorithmic progress into an accessible urgency narrative. The material is solid but largely derivative — Gidney's papers, NIST timelines, and harvest-now-decrypt-later are well-trodden ground at this point. The detection angle is the only genuinely novel hook, and it's underdeveloped.