Some Current Trends in Cryptography

In this short contribution we will briefly mention: (i) So called side-channel attacks on RSA public cryptosystem, one of the most frequently used ciphers; (ii) Impact that scalable quantum computers will have, once they become available, on all deployed public key cryptosystems and electronic signature schemes. A year ago I became one of the international team of experts working on a NATO grant entitled “Secure Implementation of Post Quantum Cryptography.” At the end I describe main goals of this project that are related to (i) and (ii).