@Hosch250 More than 6.

@Hosch250 I'm willing to believe he'd joke about it because that's the kinda thing Trump does. But that's as far as I'm gonna believe.

No, it wasn't a joke.

I'll find the quote from the tape.

tomsguide.com/news/…

Oh look, he cares so much about freedom! ;)

Personally, I buy into the conspiracy that the FBI keep doing this so no one suspects them of cracking primes, but hey, whatever floats your boat, I guess.

@Halfthawed Gesundheit?

@Halfthawed Of course they are cracking primes.

This is about the only reason I like Apple.

Also, I just requested deletion on all my accounts but one.

I'll be around until I have a transition plan to move my life and professional networking off SE, which may or may not happen.

But I'm looking to actively reduce my activity on SE.

My opinion is RSA has always been broken.

If one person managed to generate enough big primes to generate the key, someone else can generate the same list of primes and use them to crack the key.

As in like, 5-10 years ago, or 25-30 years ago?

Once you have the list of primes, it's simple division to find the pair for a given key.

@Halfthawed 25-30 years ago.

See, it's a super simple algorithm, it's just super complicated to figure out enough primes to break it for the average person.

But if one person can generate the pair of primes to create the key, someone else can generate a list of all known primes and break it.

A normal attacker couldn't do that. A nation-state attacker could.

Fair point. There probably is a computer somewhere deep below the Pentagon which is doing nothing but churning about primes.

Some of these primes are incredibly long, though. But I guess this is just the age-old fight between sword and shield, and over the millennium, that fight has never once ended in favor of the shield.

@Halfthawed Or just listening in on network traffic to a key provider, TBH.

I mean, even if the key is transmitted using SSL--that's no good if you know both keys already!

So if they knew one key, they could just evesdrop on all future keys.

@Hosch250 Are you suggesting that the American intelligence is listening in to private conversations between corporations with no justified reason?

:joy:

I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

@Halfthawed Are you participating in the Milgram experiment?

Eh, that one's not reproducible. But I'd be a happy participant.

@Hosch250 I'd be happier with Apple if they didn't also bend over for the Chinese government to let them go after "dissidents" for things like "guilty of being Uyghur" or "likes to exercise in the park", then put them in prison until some rich businessman or communist party member needs a liver.

Ironic they help the Chinese but not the US...

If you're going to stand up and talk about principles, then don't hypocritically violate the principles when enough money is pushed under your nose.

That's not principles, that's marketing.

I'd rather they have real principles.

@Hosch250 Not ironic. They know that the US government can't block them from the US market for not giving in.

Freedom, free markets, and all that...

ho ho and a bottle of rum.