Re: [gentoo-user] h

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

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

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