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| | Public-key cryptography - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
 | | The ElGamal cryptosystem (invented by Taher ElGamal then of Netscape) relies on the (similar, and related) difficulty of the discrete logarithm problem, as does the closely related DSA developed by the NSA and NIST. |
 | | Many proofs claim that breaking an algorithm, with respect to some well-defined security goals, is equivalent to solving one of the more popular mathematical problems that are presumed to be intractable, like factoring large integers or finding discrete logarithms. |
 | | That is, it is not known to be impossible that some relation between the keys in a key pair, or a weakness in an algorithm's operation, might be found which would allow decryption without either key, or using only the encryption key. |
| en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Public-key_cryptography (3854 words) |
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