Prime magnitude and keys...a ?

[Perry E. Metzger]

Jim choate says:
> I was wondering if anyone is aware of a function or test which would allow
> a person to feed PGP or other RSA algorithm a test key and then look at
> the result and determine if the key was greater or lesser than the 
> actual key? 

Of course you haven't seen such a thing. If factoring RSA keys
requires exponential time, such an algorithm is obviously not
possible. Were it possible, you could factor in time proportional to
the the number of bits in the key. Anyone who had such a function
would either be famous or wouldn't be talking.

Perry