What does this mean about the size (and thus feasibility) of a circuit required to factor a cryptographically interesting number, say, to be generous, RSA1024?
replies(3):
In addition, selling information to a government on how to break either system would be more valuable than the amount of bitcoin you would able to sell before exchanges stop accepting deposits or the price crashes.
That being said, NFS is almost thirty years old so maybe the NSA doesn't have anything better still.
Honest question because one can find such claims very often on forums like HN:
Does there really exist a "feasible" way how some "lone hacker" could sell such information to some government and become insanely rich?
I know that people who apparently have some deep knowledge about how exploit markets work claimed on HN that "if you have to ask how/where to solve your exploit (i.e. you have the respective contacts), you are very likely not able to".
This latter observation seems a lot more plausible to me than the claim often found on HN that some "lone individual" would be able to monetize on it if he found a way how to break ECDSA or RSA by selling it to some government.
On a quantum computer, my understanding is that Shor's algorithm could potentially target both problems, though.
So a hypothetical classic algorithm that breaks the RSA is also highly likely to break the ECDSA.
They would probably kill you so you couldn't tell others.
If a government can break crypto, that's worth more than money. Especially if it can remain peerless and undetected.