Right, but it's worth mentioning that factorization itself is not known to be NP-hard (and it's suspected not to be, by most, I think). Also, as others have po

Right, but it's worth mentioning that factorization itself is not known to be NP-hard (and it's suspected not to be, by most, I think). Also, as others have pointed out, the constants involved in any "generic" algorithm for solving any NP problem in Polynomial type may be astronomical, so even if it turns out that P=NP, then it may not ever be feasible to actually such any algorithm for anything practical.