From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@ocean.com.au)
Date: Fri Aug 30 2002 - 21:00:39 MDT
Dan Fabulich wrote:
> Brett Paatsch wrote:
>
> > Hi All,
> >
> > Have been a bit busy to read recent posts but a quick scan of subject
> > heading suggest this article "Simple Recipe Creates Acid Test for
Primes"
> > (Science: Vol 297. 16 Aug 2002, p1105) may not yet have been picked up.
>
> Everything the body of your message said about the article is true, but
> the subject line is false. It's a test to see whether or not a number is
> prime, not for finding its prime factors. Knowing that a number is not
> prime doesn't tell you what its factors are.
>
> There's a big difference: this new algorithm is still no use in beating
> RSA, because the interesting numbers are KNOWN to be composite (the
> product of two primes, large ones in this case). A test for primality is
> no use in this situation, except for the purposes of generating new keys
> quickly.
A key point. Thanks Dan, I stand corrected. My apologies for the subject
line.
Brett
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