I don’t know all the specifics which is what I meant when I said it could only be cracked by prime factorisation, rather than saying it couldn’t be cracked at all within reasonable time.
In fact, I do not know of any proof forbidding the existence of a quick algorithm for prime factorisation, although I would be surprised if this were not the case. (If I’m wrong and the impossibility has been proven then please tell me!)
Fair point.
I don’t know all the specifics which is what I meant when I said it could only be cracked by prime factorisation, rather than saying it couldn’t be cracked at all within reasonable time.
In fact, I do not know of any proof forbidding the existence of a quick algorithm for prime factorisation, although I would be surprised if this were not the case. (If I’m wrong and the impossibility has been proven then please tell me!)
Proving that integer factorization could not be done in polynomial time would incidentally prove that P != NP.