[TriLUG] Prime number discovery?

[John Franklin]

On Monday, August 12, 2002, at 10:48  AM, Benjamin Reed wrote:

> On Mon, 2002-08-12 at 10:45, Jeremy Portzer wrote:
>>
>> I heard "through the grapevine" about a new discovery related to prime
>> numbers made by Indian mathematicians.  If what is said is true -- that
>> the amount of time do determine if a number is prime has been 
>> "drastically
>> reduced" -- this could have grave implications on public/private key
>> cryptography.  This class of cryptography depends on the fact that the
>> prime number problem is computationally very difficult; a new method to
>> find primes could undercut huge amounts of investment in cryptography.
>
>> From what I've read, the algorithm drastically reduces that 
>> computation,
> but does not reduce the time it takes to *factor* numbers made from
> large primes, so i shouldn't affect strong crypto.

Which would mean that a new method to find primes would actually be a 
boon to the encryption community.

jf
--
John Franklin
franklin at elfie.org
ICBM: 35°43'56"N 78°53'27"W