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Authored by: Wol on Tuesday, May 21 2013 @ 12:44 PM EDT |
But it was clearly fairly well known maths in the cryptology field.
And I believe, as so often happens, RSA raced to publish against several other
teams.
Bit like Crick and Watson, where it seems that most of what they're credited was
other peoples' work. They just connected the last few dots in other peoples'
work and then beat them to the publisher.
Cheers,
Wol[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 22 2013 @ 06:55 AM EDT |
RSA basically says:
cypher_text = plain_text ^ encrypt MOD n
plain_text = cypher_text ^ decrypt MOD n
where:
n = p1 x p2 (ie has exactly two [very large] prime factors)
encrypt and decrypt are chosen based on Leonard Euler's totient function of n
(which for the choice of n = p1 x p2 is given by (p1 - 1) x (p2 - 1) )
If that is not maths oooo-ooo-oooo (translation: I'm a monkey's uncle; want to
look at this script my relatives have worked out for Shakespeare?); besides,
that was covered in the number theory unit in the first year of my maths
degree.
the encrypt value and n can be published in a directory (the "public"
part of the system) as without knowing the prime factorisation of n makes
finding the decrypt value (which is kept private) extremely difficult, and the
prime factorisation of large numbers with only two large prime factors is
extremely difficult (ie there is [currently] no known algorithm to do it quickly
effectively making the cypher uncrackable). [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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