Re:NP-hard does not mean hard (2017)
by openasocket on Thursday August 17, 2023 @12:59PM
(#37164728)
Another interesting take: P != NP could be true, while changing MANY things in reality.
Basically all modern asymmetric cryptography in common use rely on the difficulty of either integer factoring or discrete logarithms (including discrete logarithms of elliptic curves). The problem is, none of those problems are proven to be NP-complete! Even if we proved P != NP, there could still be polynomial time algorithms for integer factoring and/or discrete logarithms.
Basically all modern asymmetric cryptography in common use rely on the difficulty of either integer factoring or discrete logarithms (including discrete logarithms of elliptic curves). The problem is, none of those problems are proven to be NP-complete! Even if we proved P != NP, there could still be polynomial time algorithms for integer factoring and/or discrete logarithms.