| A prime number is a whole number greater than 1 whose only factors are 1 and itself. A factor is a whole number that can be divided evenly into another number. The first few prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23 and 29. Numbers that have more than two factors are called composite numbers. The number 1 is neither prime nor composite. For every prime number p, there exists a prime number p' such that p' is greater than p. This mathematical proof, which was demonstrated in ancient times by the Greek mathematician Euclid, validates the concept that there is no "largest" prime number. As the set of natural numbers N = {1, 2, 3, ...} proceeds, however, prime numbers generally become less frequent and are more difficult to find in a reasonable amount of time. A computer can be used to test extremely large numbers to see if they are prime. But, because there is no limit to how large a natural number can be, there is always a point where testing in this manner becomes too great a task even for the most powerful supercomputers. As of this writing, the largest known prime number has more than 23 million digits. It is referred to as M77232917 and has one million more digits than the previous record holder. The strength of public/private key encryption lies in the fact that it's easy to calculate the product of two randomly chosen prime numbers, but it is very difficult and time consuming to determine which two prime numbers were used to create an exteremely large product, when only the product is known. RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) public-key encryption relies on unique prime numbers. The primes used by the Diffie-Hellman key exchange and the Digital Signature Standard (DSA) cryptography schemes, however, are frequently standardized and used by a large number of applications. |
| | | Writing for Business | Many organizations don't give encryption a thought until they suffer a data _______.
a. breach
b. breech
Answer
| |
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment