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Although quantum computers are still years away from breaking any encryption, malicious actors already could store encrypted traffic flows and decrypt them later: the so-called "harvest now, decrypt later" attack. In TLS, key exchanges are vulnerable to this attack, which is why new algorithms are being implemented that are quantum resistant. This Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) leverages mathematical problems that can be run on traditional computers, but are expected to be hard to solve for quantum computers as well.

Browsers and web servers have been rolling out support for PQC in the form of hybrid key exchanges, that combine traditional crypto and PQC in TLS1.3 connections. Currently, around 40% of TLS connections to Cloudflare support the X25519MLKEM768 hybrid key agreement.

Safari is notably still ramping up support for PQC, while Chrome and Firefox have defaulted to it. Tomorrow will see the release of a new OpenSSL LTS which will also default to the hybrid agreement.

As a privacy focused browser, Orion should also add support for PQC key agreement.

This will have no noticeable impact on user experience.

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