April 24, 2026
When quantum meets /dev/LOL
Replace IBM Quantum back end with /dev/urandom
Quantum “breakthrough” exposed: random number generator does the same job
TLDR: A prize-winning “quantum” hack on a tiny encryption key still works even when the quantum computer is replaced by plain randomness, and commenters are roasting the organizers for not noticing. The crowd is split between mocking the contest, questioning quantum hype, and laughing at how a laptop just stole the spotlight.
The quantum hype machine just got hit with a comedy pie to the face, and the internet is loving it. A project that awarded 1 Bitcoin for a “record-breaking” quantum attack on an elliptic curve key (think: very small digital lock) has been busted by a simple test: swap the fancy IBM quantum computer for your laptop’s random number generator… and nothing breaks. The key still gets recovered. The star comment summed it up: “It still recovers the key.” Cue the popcorn.
Commenters immediately turned on Project Eleven, not quantum physics itself. One user flatly says this is “a jab at project 11,” accusing them of rubber‑stamping a result that’s basically a classical trick dressed in quantum cosplay. Others point out that a 17-bit key is so tiny it’s “trivially easy” to brute force – more science fair demo than sci‑fi future. That didn’t stop the conspiracy vibes: another commenter calls quantum computing a “3 decades old scam” and mocks the “LOL 17 bits in 2026” challenge, lighting up a familiar skeptic vs believer fight.
The nerdiest burn comes from someone who jokes this was the plot of their joke paper: if your quantum device is so noisy it looks random, of course random data will appear to work. The punchline everyone’s repeating: “No quantum computer was harmed in the recovery of this private key.”
Key Points
- •A Q-Day Prize submission claimed a quantum attack on ECDLP, recovering elliptic-curve keys up to 17 bits using IBM Quantum hardware.
- •A patch to `projecteleven.py` replaced the IBM Quantum backend in `solve_ecdlp()` with `os.urandom`, leaving all other code unchanged.
- •With the random backend, the implementation reproduces the author’s reported small-key results exactly and recovers the 16- and 17-bit keys at similar success rates.
- •The extraction logic accepts candidate keys only if they satisfy `d_cand·G == Q`, so under uniform random input, valid keys appear with probability derived from `1 − (1 − 1/n)^S`.
- •These findings indicate that the observed key recoveries can be explained by classical random sampling and verification, rather than by a measurable contribution from the quantum computer.