4 ms·
how did they know it was the product of two primes in the 1st place?
by mrcactu5 13y ago
how did they know it was the product of two primes in the 1st place?
- tgb 13y agoIt's a competition set up with prizes for factoring some 'semiprimes' (numbers with exactly two prime divisors). So unless the challenge organizers had messed up, they were guaranteed this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_Factoring_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_Factoring_Challenge
- bjornorn 13y agoChecking if a number is a prime or not is much easier than actually factoring it (if it is not a prime). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primality_test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primality_test