Re: IBM's New Algo

[ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home)]

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote:
> John Young <jya@pipeline.com> writes:
> >    The New York Times, May 7, 1997, p. D5.
> >    I.B.M. Researchers Develop A New Encryption Formula
> >    The system is based on a problem that has defied solution
> >    by mathematicians for 150 years, I.B.M. said.
> 
> I had an interesting conversation a few weeks ago with a friend who has
> a closed-form solution to a well-known problem that's been unsolved for
> about that long.  He has no intention of publishing it, but he has already
> made quite a bit of $$$ on it. :-)
> 
> I've known the guy for a number of years and it's not the first time he gets
> a good result and makes money on it instead of yet another paper in a 
> refereed journal.  In general, lots more is known to some people than is
> published. E.g. it's possible that some of stuff I did for my Ph.D. thesis
> was done by the British crypto people but never made it to the open literatre.
> 
> >    Mr. Schneier said that the cryptographic formulas now in
> >    use were already robust enough. The biggest challenge, he
> >    said, is creating security systems in the real world that
> >    are not vulnerable to hackers.
> > 
> >    "Cryptography is a lot more than math" he said.
> 
> Let me get this straight - Schneier claims that factoring is secure now and
> will remain secure in the future?

Let me get this straight -- did your friend discover a closed form
solution to the factoring problem?

	- Igor.