Puzzle Madness

Chapter 33 Encryption
The more Doudou thought about it, the more annoyed he became, and the more he felt that this deal was not worth it:
"Forget it, forget it. I'll figure it out on my own. It's just a summer homework assignment—how can a smart human like me not be able to handle it?"

Doudou shook his head, stood up and prepared to open the door and go home.

"Wait, wait! Listen to me first!"

The mathematician rubbed his philtrum vigorously with his knuckles and suddenly said:
"Don't you want to know why I was wrongly accused and hunted? Aren't you curious? Once you listen to this, you won't doubt my innocence anymore—this is quite dramatic and very interesting!"

"It even concerns the safety of the entire world!"

At this point, Doudou suddenly recalled: the person in front of him was a genuine fugitive. Even if he claimed to be innocent - now he even used the adjective "world safety"!
The boredom just now was slightly dispelled:
"Oh—tell me about it, tell me about it."

The mathematician stood up, staggered across the doorway, pulled up the dry, stiff curtains, grabbed the door handle, bumped it with his shoulder to make sure it was closed, ran to the cardboard box that had always been with him, took out a pair of glasses with tape on the legs, and put them on solemnly.

The lenses that looked like the bottom of a beer bottle really gave him the temperament of a scientific researcher.

Finally, he raised his thumb, pointed behind him, and said to Doudou:

“Avoid the walls having ears.”

Doudou walked around the mathematician, ran to the TV cabinet, and turned on the tape recorder in the empty slot: he selected the radio mode, picked a radio station that was playing music - it was the song "Need You Every Minute" by actor Lin Zixiang - and turned the volume knob to the maximum.

"No, that's not enough. Don't you watch movies? How come you don't have even the most basic anti-detection awareness? Am I the fugitive, or are you?"

"You just closed the curtains, but people next door can still hear what they say, right?"

Of course, Doudou was sure that he and the mathematician were the only two people on the entire floor right now: but he couldn't help but show off this little trick he also learned from the movie.

boom!
He then picked up the torn-to-shreds sofa, smashed it to the ground, and held it upright against the door.

"Are you relieved now?"

After another moment of stunned silence—the mathematician had gradually become accustomed to this terrifying shock—he finally asked the question solemnly and word by word:

"Do you know the RAS algorithm?"

The bespectacled mathematician began to pace in the small living room, gesturing and dancing with his hands - he seemed to be looking for a whiteboard or blackboard that did not exist; but it was obvious that there were no corresponding teaching aids here.

"Yes. An encryption algorithm."

Doudou sat on the floor, nodded, and yawned.

The mathematician was startled, his eyes widening comically behind his glasses, which looked like the bottoms of beer bottles, like a cartoon character:
"Huh?! You knew? How did you know? Aren't you still in middle school?"

Doudou was already beginning to feel sleepy—the remaining curiosity was like a candle that was about to burn out, swaying:

"Well, don't you know about aliens? Area 51 in the US is familiar with them, they specialize in alien research. Some of their electronic files and other things are encrypted using this RAS algorithm, and I heard it's very difficult to crack."

This stuff has been published so many times on "Parapsychological Exploration" that Doudou always skips it every time he watches it.

The mathematician was stunned for a moment; his eyes behind his glasses seemed to be looking elsewhere. Finally, he squeezed out two words as a reply:

"really."

But he found his courage again:

"You're right, but you're not quite accurate: the RAS algorithm is one of the most difficult public encryption algorithms to crack. In addition to the military and government departments, many commercial companies and banks also use this encryption algorithm—"

Doudou scratched his chin and stroked his imaginary beard:
"So it's so powerful? Can't you use a public computer to crack it? I see that on TV."

The mathematician opened his hands and gestured to form some kind of giant cube:

"It's possible with the computing power of a large computer, but whether you can live to see the result is hard to say."

"If I use the one at my university to crack a 1,024-bit key, it would take tens of thousands of years—theoretically. Its configuration is much more powerful than what you have in your provincial and municipal libraries."

"The US military used to have something called ARPANET, which connected several university computers over long distances. Even if you tried to crack it that way, it would take thousands of years to crack."

"It's a shame the [ARPANET] project was stopped. Otherwise, if all the mainframe computers in the world were connected to [ARPANET] or something similar, who knows how much more could be done."

Seeing the mathematician straying further and further from the topic, and even starting to talk about things he couldn't understand, Doudou began to prop up his chin with his fist, pretending to be in deep thought:

"Oh, oh. And then?"

The mathematician pushed up his glasses, his face revealing neither pride nor arrogance, but rather a deep-seated hesitation: "I'm very close to figuring out how to efficiently factor large primes using the RAS algorithm—in any case, I'm almost cracking the algorithm."

The living room was quiet for a while, as if the air had turned into sticky mud.

Suddenly, Doudou spoke doubtfully, breaking the solemn silence:

"And then? What happened?"

The mathematician's face suddenly turned red, and his cheeks puffed out:

"What? What happened?! Do you understand the significance and importance of this? This affects society as a whole, as well as the companies that use RAS-based encryption algorithms—"

Doudou spread his hands:
"I don't know. I was just waiting for you to tell me. You're just playing dumb when I don't say anything, and you're not happy when I support you. How can you be like this?"

The mathematician suddenly lost his temper again, his face turning from red to pale.
"Once it's released, it could very well upend the banking credit system! There are also many other significant impacts: if some company gets hold of it first..."

"Anyway. Anyway—I think this is why I was slandered: Originally, I wanted to announce this result after it was completed—"

Doudou clapped his hands:

"I get it! I get it: it's probably because you, this incomprehensible, incomprehensible discovery of something, are incredibly powerful, and now someone is jealous of your talent and wants to kill you and monopolize your achievements!"

The mathematician lowered his head, put his fist to his mouth and coughed twice:
"That's not all. The RAS cracking method is like the innocent man being guilty of possessing a treasure: as far as I know, no one else's research progress can catch up with mine. It's a huge gap."

"So this research is unique, a one-of-a-kind treasure. If you master it, countless political and commercial secrets will become commodities behind glass windows, visible to you."

"If I could publish the entire research after it's completed, that would be fine—but now some people want to get my results, and I want to prevent others from getting them. Some people think it's best if this thing never sees the light of day. The impact on the economic system after it is released alone is a big problem."

Doudou's eyes opened and closed for a while:
“Haa ...

"So you mean to stay here and crack this RAS? It doesn't seem that meaningful, and it's none of my business after you crack it. After all this talk, you still have to stay in the apartment, and I have to stay with you in the apartment to prevent someone from rushing in and killing you."

"Oh, it's really boring, so boring"

Doudou yawned and tears came out.

Seeing Doudou's drowsy look, the mathematician quickly racked his brains and came up with the most tempting reason for Doudou, adding:

"Think about it, if my solution works, wouldn't you be able to find out what the aliens in Area 51 actually look like? And what's going on?"

cluster!
Doudou suddenly sat up straight. Compared to the previous chatter, this sentence made him immediately understand what the mathematician wanted to say. He nodded seriously:
"Sorry, Doctor! I was so abrupt just now!"

"I understand! No wonder you're being hunted; the mission and pressure you bear are indeed considerable."

The mathematician pinched the taped temples of his glasses and exhaled cautiously. It seemed Doudou's approval had finally restored some of his confidence.

"Judging from what I have here, this is why I am now discredited and being hunted down."

Doudou scratched his nostrils and sniffed again—but there was no sound:

"I'm not saying your research isn't important. But if it's causing so much trouble, why were you even researching it in the first place?"

The mathematician sighed:
"Yeah. That's why I studied this before."

Doudou looked at the messy furniture in the room, which hadn't even been put into use yet:
"Then again, who are you waiting for? Someone to work on this RAS algorithm together? In your current situation, shouldn't you just keep running?"

The mathematician nervously opened a corner of the curtain, peeked through the blinds, and glanced at the corridor; he even turned around cautiously:

"That's what I thought, actually. But the person who saved me before told me that the most dangerous place is the safest place. Maybe if we stop now and complete the entire research, there will be a chance for this matter to turn around. After all, that way we will have bargaining chips -"

"And don't I still have to help them decipher a code? If I don't finish it, they won't provide me with the resources to escape further."

Doudou looked at his sneaky appearance, frowned and curled his lips:

"Ha, isn't escaping easy? I have a better way to help you. You're too conservative."

He tilted his head—and suddenly realized that he had also been drawn into the mathematician's twisted train of thought:

"No, then how were you wrongly accused? And how did these people save you? You were rambling on and on for a long time, but you didn't mention this."

"Hurry up, tell me what happened on the day of the incident."
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(End of this chapter)