7 ms·
If I solve integer factorization, will I get killed for breaking cryptography?
- paulcole 5y ago> the US governmental does not send out black ops operatives to kill Americans with certain kinds of knowledge, unless they are traitors Lol at this. Just keep broadening the definition of traitor until they get there.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y agoI laughed at that too. I know its a funny conspiracy theory, but this is just what a government who lets cops shoot you because they shout "gun" would say.
- perl4ever 5y ago>a government who lets cops shoot you because they shout "gun" would say Fairly recently there was a crazy guy who shouted "gun" (or "he's got a gun") near a cop, and the cop shot him. In other words, they will assume you're speaking in the third person about yourself, if you say "gun". Not that, for instance, you are observing that the officer has a gun and is dangerous.
- monkeycantype 5y agoI once told the police that a man was sneaking through the front garden of a nearby house with a hand gun. So they did the natural thing - took my money and put me in jail, let me out next morning.
- robbedpeter 5y agoSprinkle some crack on him, Johnson.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y agoI HAD TO USE NECESSARY FORCE!
- agency 5y agoYeah I don’t know how anyone with even a passing knowledge of the history of the CIA could make a claim like that.
- redis_mlc 5y agoWell, you're mostly correct but: - several retired US military members have had "a talking to" for writing biographies. - several people with US citizenship have been "droned" in the Middle East without a trial. - it's pretty common to plant "classified" documents during military-related investigations. Usually at trial some are found to be unclassified, or were unavailable to the defendant, and the govt. withdraws the complaint ... after a couple of years pass. - then there's Snowden ...
- mikewarot 5y agoIf you do solve it, do it on a completely offline computer, running MS-DOS with no network cards. Don't ever plug in a USB or other drive. Only write to floppy disks which you've bulk erased then formatted first for your backups. (That should prevent your secret from leaking, if you keep quiet) Your only safe bet, in my opinion, is to disclose your algorithm widely in such a manner as all copies can't be vacuumed up. However, know that the disclosure of such a factoring algorithm will have far reaching and unpredictable consequences. You could try to take advantage of it by breaking some old unused bitcoin wallets, but the money would be tracked to you eventually, and you'd be subjected to physical attack to disclose it (your algorithm) exclusively, then killed. Theoretically you could time it with disclosure, but you're then risking criminal charges for the theft of the bitcoins.
- emerged 5y agoIt’s something like discovering how to build nukes, and then giving everyone on the plant a nuke.
- Chris2048 5y agoBut how would anyone figure out you had such an algo? Only maybe the wallet owners could suspect it, and good chance they are in no position to do anything.
- mikewarot 5y agoAll transactions are recorded on the blockchain, they could follow the money, or have some police force do it.
- Chris2048 5y agoThat's not my point: How would they tell they your transaction is not legitimate, but the result of cracking the code? How would some random wallet owner influence local police?
- motohagiography 5y agoWe should assume NSA (and a lot of cryptocurrency nerds) is already monitoring the addresses of those old bitcoin wallets as a canary for someone making such a discovery.
- emerged 5y agoIt would be an extremely exciting problem to have. I’d force myself to spend a solid month of full time, long days and late nights devising the safest way to deal with it which improves rather than threatens my life priorities. It would be entirely possible that my end decision would be to never tell anyone.
- senectus1 5y agoI doubt it. We all stand on the shoulders of giants... the tools we make allow us to make greater tools. They also allow us to break greater tools. Its the Cycle of technology
- ta29 5y agoToo many secrets.
- tryingtogetback 5y agoeditorialization of this question on HN is bugging me: "If I solve integer factorization, will I get killed for breaking cryptography?" reads as "If I solve integer factorization and start actively breaking cryptography (snoop and steal), will I get killed?" - the answer is yes, most likely. Where the original question in quora is completely different: "If I solve integer factorization, will I get killed because I would have broken cryptography?" - the answer is no (no with "but again, it depends").
- noodles_nomore 5y agoI can't make out any nuance of this kind in the title. I'm curious what kind of association you're drawing it from.
- perl4ever 5y agoSituation (1) has two cases - (a) they know how you are doing it, and (b) they don't. In (1a) or (2), then why kill the discoverer, because if one person figured it out, someone else will. I'm not sure this is how everybody does/would think, but it seems common-sense-ish to me. For example, Newton/Leibniz.
- floatingatoll 5y agoPragmatically, eurekas are rare enough that killing one person with a eureka may well prevent anyone else from solving how they did it, or building on their work, for a very long time.
- setr 5y agoThere is the idea of multiple discovery[0] — that they tend to occur simultaneously and independently within a short timespan. It’s often just time for the discovery to be made, because of all the proceeding work. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery
- perl4ever 5y agoYes, so if you got a time machine and eliminated Isaac Newton... A world changing discovery or invention may seem like a unique magical achievement to the average person, but the question is, how likely is it for the second most suited person to accomplish it? Is it likely that there's a huge gap on average?
- gmuslera 5y agoThe big problem there is not that he does it, but that it can be done. You can't be sure if someone else (i.e. some intelligence agencies) know it already, and is actively breaking encryption, even if he doesn't. Your encryption is by definition not safe, and everyone should change it. Unless, of course, it requires magical/unachievable technology like some impossible yet quantum computer or hundreds of years.
- kristianp 5y agoMaybe you'll get hired/kidnapped by the NSA. But seriously, this isn't going to happen, it's not been solved despite the best brains on the planet trying for decades.
- pikrzyszto 5y agoWhy not? It took over 350 years for people to crack Fermat's Last Theorem. Some Hilbert's problems also took very long to crack but were finally solved.
- wodenokoto 5y agoIf the prospect of solving this problem really is death/kidnapping, no wonder the best brains on the planet haven't solved it!
- PhantomGremlin 5y agoThis idea has been around for decades. Surprised that nobody has mentioned this film. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakers_(1992_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakers_(1992_film) Whistler, Mother, and Carl investigate the box, finding it capable of breaking the encryption of nearly every computer system.
- sneak 5y agoPeace on earth, goodwill toward men. Nick related.
- zipotm 5y agoReally interesting answer is in that short cut of Pinky and The Brain: "The Brain tells a mathematical horror story": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9rTkVlbTcQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9rTkVlbTcQ
- robbedpeter 5y agoThere should be a mandatory cryptography class given during your senior year in high school - give people the tools and understanding to be competent.