Ask HN: If you found an easy way to factor large numbers, would you tell anyone?

Re:Ask HN: If you found an easy way to factor large numbers,... by _greim_ on Monday August 08, 2016 @10:30PM (#12252186)

Are we using "difficult" to mean "takes longer than the universe"? Since presumably that would be why we trust it for cryptography?

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Re:Ask HN: If you found an easy way to factor large numbers,... by khedoros on Tuesday August 09, 2016 @01:29AM (#12252799)

Basically, yes. When we talk about how fast an algorithm is, we usually talk about how much longer it will take to run when you increase the length of the input.

Encryption works because you can double the size of the encryption key and make it take [very large number] times more operations to break the encryption (twice the work to encrypt+decrypt if you have the key, but tremendously harder to crack into without the key).

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