RSA Security

[nobody@rosebud.ee.uh.edu]

Everyone here, of course, knows that breaking the RSA encryption scheme
can be no harder than factoring huge numbers. The present security in
RSA rests in the fact that nobody has found an efficient way to do it.
At the same time, however, nobody has been able to show that it can't
be done. We are simply going on faith and past history.

The problem is that if someone were to discover a efficient method for
factoring, I don't believe that we would know about it for a long time.
For example, if by some stroke of genius, I were to discover an efficient
way to factor, you would never hear about it from me! Being the greedy
person that I am, I would say to myself: "How can I make a buck from
this?". I would probably go to the government or some company (quietly)
and say to them: "For X dollars each, I will break RSA keys for you."
The beauty is that I would not need to disclose the algorithm for
factoring. They could easily check if the results that I gave them
were correct!