Breaking News (a tad technical)

Perhaps, in class III or class IV, a kid first learns how to factor an integer. For example, 15=3x5. Apparently, it looks like a child's play to factor integers. But the reality is that there is no fast method to factor integers when they are very large. If one can do that very quickly, then the consequence of such discovery may prove to be very catastrophic in our daily life in today's world. This mathematical result can be used to break a secure communication system for computer networks known as RSA Cryptosystem, the most famous and widely used cryptographic algorithm. Internet Banking, Online shopping and the likes through your credit cards or smart cards will then come under genuine security threat from the hackers. Therefore, the breaking news, contained in this link, makes a lot of sense. It is still not considered a complete break of the security system, but of course a huge step forward. The gap is closing fast ….. Think twice before you go into the “cool” experience of subscribing to porn-sites using your credit cards on the Internet. That the team who has attained this feat will be awarded a cash prize of US $ 20,000 shows the huge impact of the result in secure communication system. RSA is named after Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman who designed the aforementioned Cryptographic Algorithm using the hardness of factoring large composite integers.