Originally posted by Wizeman
I've received quite a bit of interest on the topic of quantum computing (and to a lesser extent quantum cryptography). I figured that I'd post a small tutorial on Quantum computing as well as a few links to further understand the basics of quantum mechanics (which my tutorial doesn't cover especially well). If I receive enough interest, I might be influenced to post an intro to quantum mechanics too, now that finals are over and all.

First, here are some general articles about quantum mechanics:
http://www-theory.chem.washington.ed...m/quantum.html
http://www.qubit.org/intros/comp/comp.html

Just remember, if you don't understand it at first that is normal. No one fully understands it, and I for sure don't have more than a general basis of it from my own research and from classes I have taken. Anyways, enjoy... (btw, I had to just make it a link, because I couldn't really format the tutorial properly for the forums. I hope you guys don't mind).

http://www.rpi.edu/~coulls/

-Wizeman

You state that DES uses the factorization of large numbers. It does not. You probably mean RSA, although Diffie-Hellman may be crackable by similar methods. Clearly, if you can compute fast enough, you can crack DES too, but you don't need factoring algorithms!