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From NYT > Technology:
One of the world’s most prominent cryptographers warned about a hypothetical scenario that could place the security of the global electronic commerce system at risk.
Adi Shamir, a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, circulated a research note about the problem to a small group of colleagues. He wrote that the increasing complexity of modern microprocessor chips is almost certain to lead to undetected errors.
Historically, the risk has been demonstrated in incidents like the discovery of an obscure division bug in Intel's Pentium microprocessor in 1994 and, more recently, in a multiplication bug in Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet program, he wrote.
A subtle math error would make it possible for an attacker to break the protection afforded to some electronic messages by a popular technique known as public key cryptography.
Using this approach, a message can be scrambled using a publicly known number and then unscrambled with a secret, privately held number.
The technology makes it possible for two people who have never met to exchange information securely, and it is the basis for all kinds of electronic transactions.
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