Unexplainable The math problem that could break the internet
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Jan 24, 2024 The podcast discusses the importance of encryption in protecting private information online, the history and significance of encryption in finance, the early days of cryptography and public key encryption, the reliance on mathematical functions for encryption, the security of internet encryption and the potential impact of quantum computers, and the future of building lives and relationships online with encryption
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Pioneering Public Key Cryptography
- Marty Hellman and Whit Diffie pioneered public key cryptography in the 1970s despite NSA opposition.
- They reinvented encryption to make it accessible for commercial and public use.
Encryption's Mathematical Locks
- Encryption uses one-way functions: math tasks easy to do but very hard to reverse.
- These functions act as locks preventing hackers from decoding secured information without keys.
Quantum Threat to Encryption
- Quantum computers threaten to break current encryption by efficiently solving factoring problems.
- Researchers are developing quantum-safe cryptographic methods as a security upgrade against this.