Breaking RSA Encryption Nick Manners
History of Cryptography Used to be strictly in the domain of governments… state secrets. Particularly important during WWII. Rise of computing and development led to the need of secure ciphers.
DES First cipher “approved” by the NSA. Met with suspicion. Eventually proven to be too easy to crack, due to small key size.
Paradigm Shift Paper leads to introduction of asymmetric key cryptography. Given power of computing publicly available, finally puts good cryptosystems in the public realm. Most common algorithm today: RSA encryption.
Breaking RSA Various ways to crack it. Quantum computers? Implementation errors. Solving NP completeness. Strictly speaking, we’re ignoring other problems, such as validation.
Debate 1. If you could break RSA, should you? 2. What are the implications of a stronger cryptosystem? An unbreakable one?