Related Concepts
Definition
Integer factoring is the following problem: given a positive composite integer n, find positive integers v and w, both greater than 1, such that \(n = v \cdot w\).
Background
Integer factoring is widely assumed to be a hard problem. Obviously, it is not hard for all composites, but composites for which it is believed to be difficult can easily be generated. This belief underlies the security of RSA public-key encryption and the RSA digital signature scheme . To the present day, no proof of the difficulty of factoring has been published. This is quite unlike the discrete logarithm problem , where the difficulty is provable for a generic group [19, 27].
However, this result does not have much practical relevance. In particular it does not say anything about the hardness of computing discrete logarithms in multiplicative groups of finite fields, a problem that is widely regarded as being...
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Lenstra, A.K. (2011). Integer Factoring. In: van Tilborg, H.C.A., Jajodia, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5906-5_455
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