Europol urges early action on quantum threats in two new reports
Europol on Wednesday released two reports calling on industry participants and policymakers to prepare for quantum-computing risks before they become operational. One report, written by the agency’s European Cybercrime Centre and titled Quantum Computing and Cryptocurrencies, says crypto wallets are the main point of exposure because a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could derive a private key from an exposed public key and let an attacker move funds without authorization. The report refers to that moment as Q-Day. At the same time, it says the hash functions used to link blocks and support mining are broadly quantum resistant, and argues cryptocurrencies would not collapse because of quantum computing alone. Instead, it recommends proactive defenses, including a phased move to post-quantum cryptography, stronger wallet security and better key management. It also says wallets whose public keys are already exposed on-chain cannot be fixed after the fact and must be migrated in advance. Europol’s second report, completed with Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, examines harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks and identifies risks for protocols including TLS, SSH and OpenPGP.
