On Friday 27 June 2008, kashani wrote: > > The thing about this keys is, that there is no better way than to > > brute force such keys. The algorithm uses a function which inverse > > is a known hard problem which resides in NP, which is a class of > > functions equal to just guessing. > > I don't believe this is true. The algorithm uses a function which is > *assumed* to be a hard problem. You assume the problem is hard > because you and anyone you know have not been able to make it easy. > That does not mean that someone has not discovered some math that > does make it easy.
It's more than a thumb-suck assumption. In maths, "assume" is overloaded to have an entirely different meaning to what it has in everyday life, much like "theory" in science. The assumption comes from all the solid maths surrounding the NP problem. As any decent mathematician/cryptologist will tell you, cracking this one is the current holy grail in their field and the amount of man-power being applied to solving it is staggering. Neil mentioned GCHQ developing public key several years before RSA, but do note that RSA still had the same bright idea that GCHQ had, only a few short years later. There are thousands of examples in math and science of the same huge advances being made by two parties independently - because they are working from the same known base. I feel quite confident that the NP problem will be no different. -- Alan McKinnon alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com -- gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
