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The End of Encryption?
An anonymous reader writes "The encryption algorithms that make virtually all electronic commerce possible work only because certain mathematical problems are very, very hard to solve. But some mathematicians are trying to prove that there's really no difference between 'hard' and 'not hard' problems--known in the math biz as P and NP. In an article on TechnologyReview.com, Simson Garfinkel spells out the real-world consequences of this mathematical conundrum."
Guvf jbexf whfg svar sbe zr!
Right is wrong when left is right.
... write 'Bridge over encrypted waters ~(__8-(0) Doh!'?
These guys couldn't even figure out when the century began.
"There was a little bit of a controversy as to when the entry of the century was," he recalls. "Was it January 1, 2000, or January 1, 2001?
Come on now. They can't figure out that and we're looking to them to figure out the whole P=NP mess?
I've just signed legislation that'll outlaw Russia forever. We'll begin bombing in five minutes.
As one would say to Mycroft in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, that's a "funny only once" joke...and the "once" was probably decades ago.
I propose we make every computer solve the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything. Computers that have figured this out already know it is 42, and it would take the fastest supercomputer in the universe eons to calculate it, making it ultra-secure!
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
I saw a movie about this exact same thing. Luckliy Robert Redford and his team won and the world was made safe from Ben Kingsley, but it was touch and go there for a little bit.
I was worried.
The one way to tell for sure if the good guys win, is if the Republican National Committee goes bankrupt and GreenPeace gets a sizable donation. Also, you might see Sydney Poitier in Tahiti and Dan Akroyd in a brand spanking new RV.
--
Pain?
Try Prison.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this post is too small to contain.
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
Cryptography will die when the last human draws its breath. Er.... shouldn't that be third-to-last human?
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
Simon Garfunkel Encryption Protocol. "Hello aklsdj=2vxcwe (( my old friend." SYN: Are you going to Scarborough Fair? ACK: Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.
-Randy
Cryptography will die when the last human draws its breath. Probably one human before that. The last human won't need encryption, will he?
And besides... if you want real security, just do double encryption.
I suggest using double ROT-13.
But some mathematicians are trying to prove that there's really no difference between 'hard' and 'not hard' problems
Well, it's always better to have the hard problem. You may have to seek medical attention, but at least your pride remains intact.
Only if he doesn't want Alien Archeologists reading his writings...
Bell-bottom pants aren't cool anymore? Man... what a bummer. I got to quit bogarting those roaches.
If you post it, they will read.
The ability to feed the correct message back from that universe to the rest of us may be a bit tricky, but could perhaps be done by having the individual in the lucky universe set all quanta to 0xFF in a bank of LEDs in a pattern representing the plaintext.
"50 Ways to Break Encryption"...
just calculate the key, Lee
hack the algorithm, Jim
reverse-engineer, Samir
sleep, what's that?
You don't want the aliens decoding your pr0n collection.
I have a proof that proving P = NP is an NP-complete problem. Unfortunately this posting is too small to hold the proof.
If they succeed, won't it be humiliating for those mathematicians that have spent decades studying this problem to find it isn't harder than solving 2 + 2.
OH MY GOD, THEY'RE NOT???
P=NP
P/P=NP/P
1=N
Therefore, P=NP for all problems where N=1.
See, that clearly wasn't a NP problem!
Yeah and 640KB should be enough for anybody.
yes, for sufficiently large values of 2
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Can't that be said for every article on
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
P=NP
P/P=NP/P
1=N
Your proof fails when P=0, in which case any value of N will work.
-Tom Duff
"In practical terms, that would spell the end of encryption as we know it. The Internet would be vulnerable to hackers and computer viruses." Made me laugh :p~~~
I think you would end up as a very, very dead person very very quickly if you publish a way to crack RSA in a very very short time.
Poor man was only two letters away from being a music sensation...
I'm sure he's never heard that before in his life.
The consequences are that I won't be able to safely browse Slashdot from work over an ssh tunnel without getting in trouble, anymore.
I've had secure, non-snoopable access to the Internet for my entire professional life. If I actually have to start working I don't think I'll be able to handle it.
Researchers have shown that simply throwing a thick blanket over a subject can result in a Denial of Light attack. Pundits have suggested that with this knowledge, there is no longer any point in using light any more, when it can be denied so simply. Experts are working overtime to come up with a solution.
One important class of problems which should be included in this discussion is the class of P Complete problems.
These are problems for which there exists a polynomial time reduction to the P Problem, which is the ability to optimally distribute P straight pegs in U linearly arranged slots (where P less than or equal to U), so as to maximize the distance between pegs.
For example, for (P=2, U=5), the optimal solution is a peg at the first and last slots. For (P=3, U=5), optimal is U0, U2, U4, etc.
It can be shown that any problem which can be reduced in polynomial time to straight men at a row of urinals is P Complete.
"I thought they were the dominant species..."
I think my parents had some of their albums...
If the Julian calendar was (and is) right then it's August 20th today instead of september 2nd
Sweet! My credit card payment isn't late afterall!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.