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You are correct, but I think it’s still a valid point. The way to demonstrate to the world that it is broken would have been to break it, and if you even skim o
by chrismeller 6y ago
You are correct, but I think it’s still a valid point. The way to demonstrate to the world that it is broken would have been to break it, and if you even skim over his bonafides it seems like something he is 1) an expert in and 2) would have the resources to demonstrate, even if not programmed by himself (grad students, perhaps?).
He’s also older and retired and could simply have the attitude of “F it, I’ll leave this here, mic drop”, so who the hell really knows.
- not2b 6y agoHe could find any number of grad students who would be happy to code up his algorithm for him, so they can be co-authors on the paper that "destroyed RSA".
- lisper 6y agoOr any number of hackers who would be happy to do it so they could be the first to break into people's bank accounts. If RSA were broken as a result of a public announcement with no warning, there would be no doubt in anyone's mind because chaos would ensue in very short order.
- Someone 6y agoI’m not claiming anything about the correctness of this proof, but if it isn’t correct, writing a program that implements the algorithm would be a waste of time. So, if the proof is hard to follow and describes a complex algorithm, grad students who don’t fully grok the supposed proof might not be that happy to work on that program. They might end up looking for a nonexistent bug in their program for months. I also think it’s illustrative to mention the Grothendieck prime (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/57_(number) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/57_(number)) here, as an example of how little concern some mathematicians have for applications of their results. That _could_ explain why Schnorr didn’t bother to even ask his students to write that program.