Computer Security
As mentioned in Session 14, prime numbers are important in computer security such as with Public Key Cryptography. A concern in computer security is the ability to factor large numbers. One of the reasons that computers can maintain security is that many large numbers are difficult to factor into products of primes. Should someone find a method to easily factor any large number or to test if it is prime, computer security would no longer be secure. At one time, RSA Laboratories offered significant monetary awards for challenge problems involving factoring large numbers.
Integer factorization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
RSA Factoring Challenge
Can prime numbers be thought of as the building blocks of natural numbers?
We know that 42 = 2 × 3 × 7. Is there another way to represent 42 as a product of primes?
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