RSA, seriously
I enjoyed the article from April 1 on the discovery of a new even prime.
In all seriousness though, n = pq really is the public key (well, that together with the public exponent, which is usually just 0x10001). If you publish Phi(n) = (p-1)*(q-1) then we can immediately recover the private exponent from that, and indeed have a good chance at recovering p and q themselves. Phi(n) is private/secret information.
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I don't understand a word you just said, son, but I like it.
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You are, as you probably already know, exactly correct, @Zach_Harris.
I stated it wrong. Technically the private key actually is d= Φ(n). All and any of p, q, and d can be determined easily with knowledge of any single one of the others. It's the modulus, n (along with the public exponent, e) that comprise the public portion. p, q, and, d are private.
I'm not sure how I made that error (I do generally know how this works). I will use as a lame excuse that I was already writing nonsense and that leaked into my brain. Or perhaps that it was late at night. Or perhaps it is senile dementia. So our April 1 post contains the wrong kind of nonsense.
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