[HN Gopher] A new rare high-rank elliptic curve, and an orchard ...
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       A new rare high-rank elliptic curve, and an orchard of Diophantine
       equations
        
       Author : mathgenius
       Score  : 194 points
       Date   : 2024-09-07 17:43 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (thehighergeometer.wordpress.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (thehighergeometer.wordpress.com)
        
       | miovoid wrote:
       | [deleted]
        
         | madars wrote:
         | Your E/Fp has order 2^3 * 3 * 37991 * 21183269 * 373015308871 *
         | 16071902378831708724506232718210977087913221837027589 and thus
         | you can't hope for more than 86 bits of security due to Pohlig-
         | Hellman, never mind cofactor attacks. encrypt() is also
         | insecure (xor every byte of the message with the same shared
         | secret byte), even if you chose a better curve.
        
           | tptacek wrote:
           | This is much better version of the sibling comment but I'm a
           | message board nerd and can't keep myself from pointing out
           | that this code is probably a little bit tongue-in-cheek.
        
         | leijurv wrote:
         | `for char in message: encrypted_char = ord(char) ^
         | (shared_secret[0] % 256)`
         | 
         | This is not real encryption, it picks only one byte of shared
         | secret and XORs it into the plaintext. Therefore, there are
         | only 256 possible decryption keys to check, which is trivial.
         | 
         | Instead, you'd want to use the shared secret as a key to
         | something strong and symmetric like AES.
        
           | tptacek wrote:
           | I don't think it's meant to be real encryption.
        
             | leijurv wrote:
             | I suspect it was, given that they've now deleted their
             | comment.
        
           | thechao wrote:
           | Any idiot knows not to use power-of-two! You gotta use "+13",
           | which is prime and, therefore, *secure*.
        
             | BobbyTables2 wrote:
             | And Twice is nice!
        
       | Xcelerate wrote:
       | This sounds very similar to the same process for Turing machines:
       | https://www.quantamagazine.org/amateur-mathematicians-find-f...
       | 
       | Determining the halting behavior of each successive Turing
       | machine generally becomes harder and harder until eventually we
       | reach a machine with Collatz-like behavior.
       | 
       | The two problems are equivalent in some sense, but I wonder if
       | there's an easy way to "port" over the work between the two
       | projects.
        
         | yorwba wrote:
         | The equivalence of Diophantine equations and Turing machines is
         | established by the MRDP theorem:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diophantine_set#Matiyasevich's...
         | 
         | For every Diophantine equation _P_ ( _x_ , _y_ ) = 0, where _x_
         | is a tuple of integer parameters and _y_ is a tuple of
         | unknowns, there is a Turing machine that takes the parameters
         | _x_ as input and halts iff there is an integer solution _y_
         | satisfying the equation (this direction is easy, just have the
         | Turing machine test all tuples of integers in some order and
         | halt iff it found a solution)
         | 
         | and for every Turing machine, there is a Diophantine equation
         | so that if _x_ is an encoding of the Turing machine input,
         | there is an integer solution _y_ to the equation iff the the
         | Turing machine halts for input _x_. (This direction is hard,
         | you need to have _y_ encode the execution history of the Turing
         | machine somehow, and enforce the transition rules with the
         | structure of the equation.)
        
       | fny wrote:
       | I feel like we've reached an era where information provenance is
       | of paramount importance. This has always been an issue with
       | fabricated data sets, but the ease at which anything can be
       | fabricated--even a video--demands some new determinant of what is
       | real and human born.
        
       | fermigier wrote:
       | I broke the record back in 1992: Fermigier, Stefane - Un exemple
       | de courbe elliptique definie sur Q de rang >=19. (French) [An
       | example of an elliptic curve defined over Q with rank >=19] C. R.
       | Acad. Sci. Paris Ser. I Math. 315 (1992), no. 6, 719-722.
       | 
       | And again in 1997: Fermigier, Stefane - Une courbe elliptique
       | definie sur Q de rang >=22. (French) [An elliptic curve defined
       | over Q of rank >=22] Acta Arith. 82 (1997), no. 4, 359-363.
       | 
       | Noam Elkies was already a major contributor to the field at the
       | time. I dropped math to do computer stuff :)
        
         | ykonstant wrote:
         | What kind of computer stuff are you doing now?
        
           | alecco wrote:
           | His HN about page has a lot of info.
        
           | fermigier wrote:
           | Running an open source software business... Founded
           | https://nuxeo.com/ and now https://abilian.com/
        
         | anyon_fusion wrote:
         | what made you drop math for computer stuff, if you don't mind
         | sharing? (I'm in a similar boat)
        
       | ykonstant wrote:
       | Great write-up; I need to review how GRH is used to prove bounds
       | on the rank of elliptic curves.
       | 
       | Also, the talk about polynomial parametrizations reminded me of
       | the first Diophantine equation I solved in high school:
       | (a^2+b^2)/(a+b) = (c^2+d^2)/(c+d). I had initially thought it had
       | finitely many solutions, but then Nikos Tzanakis corrected me and
       | told me I am missing many. So I toiled for two entire days and
       | found the complete 2-parameter polynomial family of solutions.
        
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