Month: January 2023

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Three weeks ago, panic swept across some corners of the security world after researchers discovered a breakthrough that, at long last, put the cracking of the widely used RSA encryption scheme within reach by using quantum computing.

Scientists and cryptographers have known for two decades that a factorization method known as Shor’s algorithm makes it theoretically possible for a quantum computer with sufficient resources to break RSA. That’s because the secret prime numbers that underpin the security of an RSA key are easy to calculate using Shor’s algorithm. Computing the same primes using classical computing takes billions of years.

The only thing holding back this doomsday scenario is the massive amount of computing resources required for Shor’s algorithm to break RSA keys of sufficient size. The current estimate is that breaking a 1,024-bit or 2,048-bit RSA key requires a quantum computer with vast resources. Specifically, those resources are about 20 million qubits and about eight hours of them running in superposition. (A qubit is a basic unit of quantum computing, analogous to the binary bit in classical computing. But whereas a classic binary bit can represent only a single binary value such as a 0 or 1, a qubit is represented by a superposition of multiple possible states.)

Enlarge / A broken watch. (credit: Getty | Carlos Garcia Granthon/Fotoholica Press)

A 13-minute segment on a recent episode of CBS's 60 Minutes appeared to be a news story on Novo Nordisk's weight-loss drug Wegovy, but was actually a sponsored promotion violating federal regulations, according to the nonprofit public health advocacy organization Physicians Committee.

The group filed a complaint with the Food and Drug Administration last week, arguing that the segment, which aired on January 1, violates the FDA's "fair balance" requirement. This law requires that drug advertisements give a fair balance to a drug's risks and benefits.

The Physicians Committee claims that CBS's 60 Minutes received advertising payments from Novo Nordisk prior to the coverage, and that the aired segment only included experts who had also been paid by Novo Nordisk. The segment lauded the drug with words and phrases such as "highly effective," "safe," "impressive," "fabulous," and "robust," but didn't delve into side effects or alternative treatments and strategies for weight loss.