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New Guidance Helps Businesses Verify Quantum-Safe Hardware Claims

TCG issued guidance to help businesses verify that trusted platform modules genuinely meet quantum-safe requirements.

The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) published new guidance aimed at proving that trusted platform modules (TPMs) genuinely satisfy essential quantum-safe requirements. The document gives businesses a way to validate vendor claims about post-quantum readiness in hardware security rather than trusting marketing assertions. This is a guidance publication, not an incident or vulnerability disclosure.

Infosecurity Magazine · 22d agoAdvisory

G7 Urges Fast-Track on Quantum-Safe Cybersecurity Rules

G7 cybersecurity agencies led by France's ANSSI urged accelerated transition to post-quantum cryptography, prioritizing critical systems and phased, risk-based migration.

Under France's 2026 G7 Presidency, ANSSI, chairing the G7 Cybersecurity Working Group, published a September 3 call to action urging governments and organizations to begin quantum-safe (PQC) transitions now, reframing the quantum threat as near-term. The document, signed by the national cyber agencies of all G7 members and supported by the EU Commission and ENISA, outlines five priorities including national PQC strategies, R&D, public-private partnerships, and integrating PQC into cybersecurity requirements. It recommends cryptographic inventories, dependency mapping, prioritizing the most critical systems, and buying PQC-integrated products during normal renewal cycles. ANSSI will stop vetting non-quantum-safe products in 2027, with PQC mandatory in some security product procurement by 2030.

Infosecurity Magazine · 12d agoPolicy & legal

Preparing for the Post-Quantum Era: A Call to Action

CISA and the G7 Cyber Security Working Group urge organizations to begin post-quantum cryptography migration, outlining five transition priorities.

CISA and the G7 Cyber Security Working Group jointly released "Preparing for the Post-Quantum Era: A Call to Action". The document urges governments and organizations to begin migrating sensitive data, authentication systems, and critical assets to post-quantum cryptography against emerging quantum computing threats. It defines five priorities: raising quantum-risk awareness, national PQC strategies, quantum-safe R&D, public-private partnerships, and integrating PQC into cybersecurity requirements and procurement.

CISA Advisories · 13d agoPolicy & legal

New TCG guidance gives buyers a way to test PQC-ready TPM claims

Trusted Computing Group published PTP 1.07-based requirements defining PQC-ready and PQC-upgradable TPM designations to guide buyers assessing quantum-safe hardware.

The Trusted Computing Group published requirements establishing PTP 1.07, based on TPM 2.0 Library Specification Version 1.85, as the baseline for a 'TCG PQC-ready TPM', and defined a second designation, 'TCG PQC-upgradable TPM', for chips that can be upgraded to that support. The guidance lets buyers request vendor evidence that TPMs meet end-to-end post-quantum requirements for identities, attestation, and hardware-anchored trust rather than single-algorithm compliance. TCG also announced plans to extend its certification programs to certify TPMs meeting PTP 1.07, noting that 90% of businesses still lack a formal PQC roadmap.

Help Net Security · 22d agoTools

Certifying Adversarial Robustness of Quantum Classifiers under Known-Readout Query Access

Framework certifies adversarial robustness of quantum classifiers using only measurement statistics and finite-shot outcomes, demonstrated on IBM Quantum hardware.

The paper introduces a measurement-only certification framework for adversarial robustness of quantum classifiers under known-readout query access, requiring no tomography, parameters, or gradients. It returns a lower bound ruling out untargeted errors within a radius and an attack-independent upper bound witnessing an adversarial state, both estimable with finite-sample guarantees. Evaluations show the lower bound tracks exact optima on tractable instances while the upper bound stays informative when standard attacks fail. The method was validated on IBM Quantum hardware using 40 executions of two 8-qubit quantum neural networks.

arXiv cs.CR · 5d agoResearch

Evaluating Verified Autonomy in Quantum Engineering

Quantum-Harbor lab and QIQCBench (49 tasks) expose wide performance gaps across 17 frontier agentic systems in verified quantum engineering.

Researchers built Quantum-Harbor, a virtual laboratory providing a controlled execution environment where scientific AI agents interacting with quantum systems can have both actions and conclusions directly verified. QIQCBench contributes 49 expert-authored tasks spanning calibration and control, error correction and compilation, and sensing and networking. Across 17 frontier agentic systems, verified performance varied widely, exposing a substantial gap between demonstrated capability and reliable autonomous operation.

arXiv cs.AI / cs.LG / cs.CL · 21h agoAI research1

Operational Roles of QRNG-Derived Quantum Entropy in Bitcoin Proof-of-Work Architectures

arXiv study finds quantum-random entropy adds no Bitcoin PoW success advantage but helps assurance in fault and provenance scenarios.

The paper shows replacing classical entropy with QRNG output does not change honest Bitcoin proof-of-work success probability when candidate headers remain distinct. It introduces a reproducible benchmark measuring an entropy-efficiency factor and a reboot-diversity index, finding QRNG value only in assurance-oriented scenarios involving correlated restart faults, namespace reuse, and entropy provenance. Validation is simulation-based, with hardware-in-the-loop testing identified as future work.

arXiv cs.CR · 12d agoResearch

Hardware Fingerprinting FTQC via Quantum Decoder Timing

Quantum decoder timing on IBM Heron processors forms a side channel enabling device fingerprinting with 89% accuracy and workload inference.

The work demonstrates that wall-clock syndrome-decoding times on fault-tolerant quantum computers constitute a novel hardware side channel. Using per-shot decoder timings from three IBM Heron processors collected over 68 days, a passive observer can reconstruct detector-firing distributions, estimate logical error rate, infer code distance, and fingerprint the specific device with up to 89% accuracy versus 33% for random guessing. Noisy simulation based on Google's 105-qubit Willow processor distinguishes nine surface-code patches at 81% accuracy, showing the channel persists across vendors and code families.

arXiv cs.CR · 5d agoResearch

Post-quantum cryptography adoption and the national security implications

Opinion analysis argues quantum computing favors nation-state espionage, leaving lagging post-quantum adoption at critical infrastructure exposed to harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks.

A CSO Online opinion piece argues that the extreme cost and infrastructure requirements of quantum computers will concentrate cryptographically relevant quantum capability among nation-states and a few corporations, favoring espionage and economic espionage over criminal monetization. It highlights harvest-now-decrypt-later risk to long-lived secrets, expert warnings such as Filippo Valsorda's, and diverging CRQC timelines with Google suggesting possibly 2029. The piece predicts governments, banks, and targeted sectors will adopt PQC first while utilities, small hospitals, and local government lag, widening exploitable gaps in critical infrastructure reminiscent of Salt Typhoon-style access.

CSO Online · 7d agoIndustry

Observational Indistinguishability and Integrity Blind Regions in Hybrid Quantum-Classical Workflows

Framework formalizes integrity blind regions in hybrid quantum-classical workflows, validated across 3,600 label interventions with conformal detection rules.

The paper presents a claim-relative evidence and reference framework for integrity of hybrid quantum-classical workflows, distinguishing structural blind regions caused by observational indistinguishability from finite-batch statistical misses. Experiments over 3,600 label interventions show exact label-path invariance for feature and prediction views. The geometry-aligned construction detects 343 of 2,700 conclusion-changing interventions using the conformal rule and 1,183 of 2,700 with the uncorrected union, with executed conformal clean false-action rates of 0.048-0.059.

arXiv cs.CR · 1d agoResearch

Safe Meta-Reinforcement Learning via Information Space Reachability

Safe meta-RL framework reasons about safety in information space, learning a safety value function used for safety filtering and constrained policy optimization.

The paper proposes safe meta-RL that reasons about safety in information space, capturing both physical state and the agent's belief over the underlying task. A safety value function measures the probability of avoiding unsafe regions indefinitely and satisfies a self-consistency condition and Bellman equation, making it learnable via meta-RL. The resulting algorithm uses the learned function for safety filtering and constrained policy optimization, with effectiveness demonstrated on meta-RL benchmarks.

arXiv cs.AI / cs.LG / cs.CL · 1d agoAI research

Bipartisan Senate bill aims to prepare energy sector for Q

Bipartisan Senate bill would direct FERC to factor quantum computing threats and post-quantum cryptography into US electric grid cybersecurity reliability standards.

The Quantum Grid Utility Assurance and Resilient Defense (Quantum-GUARD) Act, introduced by Senators Mike Rounds and Chris Coons, would require FERC to consider quantum computing threats when reviewing electric reliability standards and to explore post-quantum cryptography use in both IT and OT systems, plus a technical sandbox to study quantum impacts. It aligns with NIST's post-quantum algorithm work, and a June executive order moved the federal PQC migration deadline from 2035 to 2030. Industry experts noted the hard part is upgrading infrastructure such as SCADA communications and software update integrity ahead of those deadlines.

CyberScoop · 22d agoPolicy & legal

Optimizing Credential Blast Radius Through Trust Boundaries and Delegation Under Post-Quantum Authentication Costs

Academic paper models credential blast radius optimization across trust domains under post-quantum latency costs, cutting expected impact by up to 36%.

The paper formulates the joint selection of trust domains and credential-derivation structures under policy and latency constraints as an NP-hard optimization problem, showing the scalarized two-domain direct-issuance case reduces to a weighted minimum cut. In 195 of 230 exhaustive synthetic comparisons, joint optimization produced lower credential blast radius than choosing boundaries first, especially under chained delegation. A trace-derived replay using measured post-quantum authentication costs found the best design reduced expected impact by up to 36% relative to a single domain within the latency budget.

arXiv cs.CR · 12d agoResearch

Getting ahead of ‘harvest-now-decrypt-later’: Post-quantum cryptography planning

Opinion piece urges organizations to begin post-quantum cryptography migration now, citing harvest-now-decrypt-later risk and NIST deadlines.

CSO Online outlines why harvest-now-decrypt-later makes long-lived sensitive data a current risk even before quantum computers exist. It cites NIST IR 8547 timelines deprecating RSA-2048 and ECC P-256 by 2030 and removing them by 2035, finalized FIPS standards ML-KEM, ML-DSA, and SLH-DSA, upcoming FN-DSA (FIPS 206), NSA requirements for national security systems from 2027, and UK NCSC phased guidance through 2035. The author recommends cryptographic discovery, crypto-agility, and prioritizing long-confidentiality data and TLS endpoints.

CSO Online · 6d agoResearch

Why a cryptographic inventory is key for addressing the quantum computing threat

Tenable argues organizations need cryptographic inventories and phased plans to counter harvest-now-decrypt-later quantum attacks.

Tenable's blog warns that quantum computers will eventually break current public-key cryptographic algorithms, and that "harvest now, decrypt later" collection makes the risk operational today. It recommends building a comprehensive cryptographic inventory and executing a phased operational strategy to migrate toward quantum-resistant protection for stored and transmitted data.

Tenable Blog · 18d agoIndustry

EFI Pairs Without One-Way Puzzles: Oracle Separations from Communication Complexity

Theorists build a classical oracle where one-way puzzles fail yet EFI pairs survive, separating two candidate minimal assumptions of quantum cryptography.

The paper constructs a single classical oracle relative to which one-way puzzles do not exist, even with an unbounded verifier, while an EFI pair survives every classical-query distinguisher holding advice, making one superposition query at the end. Security is proven by reducing adversary knowledge to communication complexity for Vector-in-Subspace, with the superposition query bounded using random matrix theory. Relative to the oracle, quantum polynomial time offers no advantage on tasks with classical inputs and outputs and there is no proof of quantumness, separating the leading minimal assumptions of quantum cryptography.

arXiv cs.CR · 5d agoResearch

GAUGE: A Formal Framework for Measuring Cryptographic Security under Heterogeneous Adversary Cost Models

GAUGE frames cryptographic security as profiles over adversary cost models, certifying a ranking reversal between ML-KEM-512 and AES-128 from a 4–5% memory pricing shift.

GAUGE represents cryptographic security as a function over admissible adversary cost models (a security profile), proves profiles are piecewise-linear and concave, and establishes a rating trilemma when two profiles cross. A polynomial-time linear-programming procedure certifies whether the ranking of two schemes is robust, reverses under admissible models, or is genuinely incomparable. Applied to NIST post-quantum standards, the framework certifies a ML-KEM-512 versus AES-128 ranking reversal from a 4–5% shift in memory pricing and measures lattice-sieving cost drift of 9.79 bits per year over eight years. A hybrid X25519 + ML-KEM-768 handshake reduces combined-break probability twenty-fold at a 2.3 kilobyte cost.

arXiv cs.CR · 22h agoResearch

The G7 tells industry to hurry up and prep for post-quantum encryption

A G7 working group report urges governments and industry to accelerate post-quantum cryptography migration, framing quantum risk as a near-term economic threat.

A cybersecurity working group formed at the June 2026 G7 Summit in France called on organizations to stop postponing migration of critical systems to post-quantum cryptography, warning that harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks against currently encrypted data exist today. The report was signed by CISA, the UK NCSC, France's ANSSI, Germany's BSI, Canada's CSE, Japan's NCO, and Italy's ACN. It also cautions that some NIST-selected PQC algorithms have already been broken on classical computers, reinforcing support for crypto-agility. The push aligns with a recent US executive order moving federal PQC migration timelines from 2035 to 2030, while Google and others target 2029.

CyberScoop · 12d agoPolicy & legal

Safety for Whom? Boundary-Aware Self-Distillation for Controlled LLM Safety Refusal

A self-distillation safety framework tunes narrow-boundary refusals in Qwen3-8B, raising target-domain refusal to 84.75% while cutting over-refusal from 15.20% to 5.20%.

The paper formulates narrow-boundary safety, where deployments need refusals within specific topics rather than whole subjects, and proposes an offline self-generated framework with controlled topic generation, escalating retries, and harmful-benign boundary pairs. On political persuasion with Qwen3-8B, the method raised target-domain refusal from 9.47% to 84.75% and cut the mean unsafe-response rate across three broader benchmarks from 26.26% to 0.14%. Verified target-model responses reduced over-refusal from 15.20% to 5.20%, and boundary-pair data cut comply-side over-refusal on held-out pairs from 32.94% to 4.16%. Results show data composition controls the safety-usability trade-off and alignment should be evaluated on both sides of the refusal boundary.

Hugging Face daily papers · 13d agoAI safety & security1

Lazarus Used Post-Quantum Key Exchange to Deliver Zero-Day

Lazarus used a post-quantum key exchange to shield delivery of a Windows zero-day exploit, adding stealth to its campaign.

North Korean Lazarus Group malware used a post-quantum key exchange to protect the delivery of a Windows zero-day exploit. The technique adds a layer of stealth to the campaign's initial access, complicating detection and traffic inspection. It signals growing APT adoption of post-quantum cryptography in offensive operations.

Infosecurity Magazine · Aug 12, 2026Threat actor in the wild

Future-Proofing the Internet: Akamai Achieves End-to-End PQC

Akamai says it achieved end-to-end post-quantum cryptography across its network to future-proof internet traffic.

Akamai announced it has achieved end-to-end post-quantum cryptography (PQC) across its services. The company frames the move as future-proofing the internet against quantum decryption threats. No article text was available; details are limited to the announcement title.

Akamai Blog · 28d agoIndustry

Google Cloud Targets 2027 for First Major Post-Quantum Security Milestone

Google Cloud set 2027 for its first major post-quantum cryptography milestone to counter store-now-decrypt-later risks, migrating through 2028.

Google Cloud announced a post-quantum cryptography roadmap targeting its first major security milestone in 2027. The plan aims to mitigate store-now-decrypt-later harvest risks, with wider migration goals extending through 2028. The roadmap affects cryptographic protections for Google Cloud services and customer migration planning timelines.

Infosecurity Magazine · Aug 13, 2026Industry

CVE-2026-16232: Checkpoint Quantum Security Management auth bypass ...

Attackers exploit Check Point SmartConsole authentication bypass CVE-2026-16232 to take over Quantum Security Management firewall servers; CISA added it to KEV.

CVE-2026-16232 is an authentication bypass (CWE-287) in the SmartConsole login process of Check Point Quantum Security Management, exploitable via an application token. Disclosed July 22, 2026, it was added to CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog the same day with remediation due July 25. Rapid7, Check Point Research and other vendors confirmed exploitation in the wild, and a public PoC was released. A workaround is available, and federal agencies must comply with BOD 26-04 patching guidance.

LLM-Driven Algorithm Design for Quantum Circuit Synthesis based on Binary Decision Diagrams

QuantumEvo uses an LLM to evolve BDD variable-ordering heuristics, achieving a 70.9% tie-or-win rate on quantum circuit cost versus baseline methods.

The QuantumEvo framework uses an LLM as a heuristic generator for quantum-cost-aware BDD variable ordering in reversible circuit synthesis, searching over heuristics initialized from multiple families and selecting them by downstream quantum circuit cost. The discovered heuristic HGA-QE modifies the sifting step inside a genetic algorithm and achieves a 70.9% tie-or-win rate against the per-function best baseline, with strict wins on 13.5% of functions. Advantages are clearer on benchmark suites not used for heuristic discovery.

arXiv cs.AI / cs.LG / cs.CL · 11d agoAI research1

Nearly half of enterprises have no one leading PQC migration

Axiad survey finds 46% of enterprises lack a single leader for post-quantum cryptography migration despite most maintaining cryptographic inventories.

Axiad research on post-quantum cryptography (PQC) readiness found 75% of respondents maintain continuously updated inventories of certificates, keys, and algorithms, but 46% have no single person owning the migration. About half have never formally assessed whether public-facing infrastructure supports post-quantum key exchange. 67% said the harvest-now-decrypt-later threat is an active priority, with competing priorities, budget constraints, and lack of regulatory guidance cited as top obstacles; executives were more confident than PKI practitioners.

Help Net Security · 26d agoPolicy & legal