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He 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".
by not2b 6y ago
He 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.