Thread:Cardshark92/@comment-13488655-20151002100034/@comment-26130256-20151002182145

First, here's a link to explain a little.

Basically, RSA is one of the world's big standards in secret codes. It has the unique advantage that you can send a person a message without having to previously send them the key, because the encrypting and decrypting processes use completely different functions.

2 parts: a public and private key. The public key (a very big number I will call N) is used to make the message, and one could literally put it on a neon sign for all that security cares. The private key is made of two prime numbers (P and Q) multiplied together to make N. To make a message, you only need N, but it can only be decrypted using P and Q, which must be kept secure.

The reason the code is so secure is that there is no known shortcut method to figure out the prime factors besides brute forcing it. If N is 35, obviously P is 7 and Q is 5. But what about when N is hundreds of numbers long? Your only hope is to keep trying primes until something works and pray you finish before the universe ends. Do I make sense so far?