Links
I will be looking for relevant links that appear in the news (current events)
and will post them here. If you hear an interesting story, pass it on and I will
probably post it.
(January 4, 2011) This article was from almost a year ago, but it will be relavant
for the material at the end of our course.
A 232 digit
number was factored into the product of two primes.
This number was part of a challenge offered by RSA (the company) and there was a cash prize but
the prize expired in 2007. The security of RSA (the code) is based on the factoring problem
and we will learn more about this towards the last third of the course.
The web comic xkcd.com has a cult following of
people who get a laugh from nerdy cultural references. It
often has comics related to cryptography and mathematics from this course.
(April 11, 2011) A puzzle
posted by the U.S. FBI. The challenge is to break
the code. The postings to the public are recent (notice the March 29 2011 date)
but the case itself is 12 years old. (Thanks to Alex Ashbourne for pointing this one out).
