You might be tempted to use that shiny new prime number for RSA encryption. Don't do it. RSA encryption uses the difficulty of factoring the product of two large prime numbers to make sure hackers can ...

The bolding is mine, because if in fact the agency did crack the encryption schemes used for bank transactions (the Times is somewhat unclear on that point), then in doing so it may have solved a math ...

A large chunk of the global economy now rests on public key cryptography. We generally agree that with long enough keys, it is infeasible to crack things encoded that way. Until such time as it isn’t, ...

When sending your credit card number through a public medium, such as the Internet, your financial credibility may be compromised if the number is not first encrypted. It is impossible to tell who may ...

Every encrypted connection you make online relies on a centuries-old mystery about prime numbers. This is the elegant ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American A team of researchers has successfully ...