Listen "[MINI] Is the Internet Secure?"
Episode Synopsis
This episode explores the basis of why we can trust encryption. Suprisingly, a discussion of looking up a word in the dictionary (binary search) and efficiently going wine tasting (the travelling salesman problem) help introduce computational complexity as well as the P ?= NP question, which is paramount to the trustworthiness RSA encryption. With a high level foundation of computational theory, we talk about NP problems, and why prime factorization is a difficult problem, thus making it a great basis for the RSA encryption algorithm, which most of the internet uses to encrypt data. Unlike the encryption scheme Ray Romano used in "Everybody Loves Raymond", RSA has nice theoretical foundations. It should be noted that although this episode gives good reason to trust that properly encrypted data, based on well choosen public/private keys where the private key is not compromised, is safe. However, having safe encryption doesn't necessarily mean that the Internet is secure. Topics like Man in the Middle attacks as well as the Snowden revelations are a topic for another day, not for this record length "mini" episode.
More episodes of the podcast Data Skeptic
Video Recommendations in Industry
26/12/2025
Eye Tracking in Recommender Systems
18/12/2025
Cracking the Cold Start Problem
08/12/2025
Shilling Attacks on Recommender Systems
05/11/2025
Music Playlist Recommendations
29/10/2025
Bypassing the Popularity Bias
15/10/2025
Sustainable Recommender Systems for Tourism
09/10/2025
Interpretable Real Estate Recommendations
22/09/2025
ZARZA We are Zarza, the prestigious firm behind major projects in information technology.