If something can be encrypted with a public key, why can’t someone just reverse engineer the encryption using the public key to get the original data?
In: Technology
They can, it’s just *really* hard. As in *Lifetime of the universe* hard.
How the encryption works is public knowledge. It’s essentially just raising a message “m” to the power “p” (modulo N) It can be reversed by raising the resulting secret message to a different power “k” so that pk cancel each other out and you get m^1 , or just the message out.
however, if you don’t know what “k” is knowing “p” doesn’t help you. You’re stuck at guessing randomly what “k” is until you happen to guess the correct answer. Given how many numbers are candidates (billions and billions) even the fastest computers are too slow to manage the task in a reasonable timeframe, and even then you can always just make the secret keys bigger to make the task harder.
Latest Answers