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Continued fractions are very cool. I saw in a CTF competition once a question about breaking an RSA variant that relied on the fact that a certain ratio was a t
by LPisGood 2y ago
Continued fractions are very cool. I saw in a CTF competition once a question about breaking an RSA variant that relied on the fact that a certain ratio was a term in sequence of continued fraction convergents.
Naturally the person pursing a PhD in number theory (whom I recruited to our team for specifically this reason) was unable to solve the problem and we finished in third place.
- jwilk 2y agoSounds a bit like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiener%27s_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiener%27s_attack. (It's not a good article when it comes to the attack details, unfortunately.)
- LPisGood 2y agoI gave a presentation on that attack in a number theory class - it made not getting that problem sting a little more.
- throwaway2037 2y agoWhat do you mean by "[n]aturally" here?
- LPisGood 2y agoIt was an ironic twist of fate that we were preparing specifically for this type of challenge and, when presented with exactly what we had prepared for we failed to see the solution.
- throwaway2037 2y agoWhy not just say "ironically"?
- LPisGood 2y agoI think the other comment had an excellent breakdown of the various factors at play, so I will start by saying I fully endorse what was said there. To highlight a key point: “naturally” is slightly humorous because it implies that while the outcome was ironic, it should almost be expected that an ironic bad thing happens. In addition, it signals my opinion on such situations more generally, whereas “ironically” is a more straightforward description of what happened that would add less humor and signal less of my personality.
- reaperman 2y agoIt's used with sarcasm / irony. In this use case, "naturally" implies the author intended to communicate one or more emotions from a certain narrow set of possibilities. That set includes: - An eye-rolling, critical emotion - where they used up a valuable spot on the team to retain a person who ostensibly promises to specialize in exactly this type of problem, but instead they proved to be useless even in the one area they were supposed to deliver value. - A emotion similar to that invoked by "c'est la vie". Sometimes this is resigned, sometimes this is playful, sometimes this is simply neutrally accepting reality. Follow-up comments from the person who wrote it indicate they meant it in a playful sense of "c'est la vie", and indicated that the team found camaraderie and joy in teasing each other about it. Sorry if this sounds a little bit like ChatGPT - I wrote it myself but at the point when one is explaining this kind of thing, it's difficult to not write like an alien or a robot.
- djmips 2y agoWhy unnecessarily air this grievance in a public forum. If this person reads it they will be unhappy and I'm sure they have already suffered enough from this failure.