Re: How to make money fast (in science fiction)

In rec.arts.sf.science Rich Weyand <weyand@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> It is generally understood that sooner or later the difficulty of
factoring 
> the products of large primes will be mathematically solved, at which
time the 
> whole RSA encryption mechanism will break down.  With it will go all of 
> on-line credit card sales, secure websites, interbank etfs, etcetcetc. 
The 
> timing of this mental breakthrough is necessarily unpredictable.
[snip proposal for him to Make Money Fast by coming up with a better 
cryptosystem and then breaking RSA]

It is of course entirely possible that it will turn out that factoring 
such numbers is provably difficult. People don't generally think it will 
turn out that way, but it's hard to say until either a proof arrives or a 
true break is discovered.

In any case, I won't object to a book which claims that RSA is breakable 
if you have superhuman intelligence. As opposed to a book which revolves 
around said superhuman getting paid $BIGNUM for writing incomprehensible, 
unmaintainable spaghetti code, which will swiftly find itself making a 
dent in my wall.

One thing to think about in all this is just what will happen once RSA 
falls. If it's not done very carefully, it could result in the patent for 
the Better Cryptosystem getting forcibly opened to the public domain in 
order to prevent or mitigate economic collapse.

-- 
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software