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"Hiding in lattices: An improved mathematical strategy for encrypting data," by Ivars Peterson. Science News, 5 July 1997, pages 12-13.
Data encryption schemes are widely used to insure the security of information transmissions. For example, companies routinely use such schemes to protect communications with customers over the World Wide Web. As computers become faster and more powerful, and therefore more capable of cracking the encryption devices in use today, computer scientists and mathematicians continue to develop new schemes that are more difficult to breach. This article describes a possible basis for a new encryption scheme, developed by IBM researchers Miklos Atjai and Cynthia Dwork. Rather than using factorization of large numbers, as is common in encryption schemes, this method uses lattices (equally spaced sets of points) in a high-dimensional space. The new encryption method would be based on the fact that, in high dimensions, it is extremely difficult to locate the point in the lattice that is the closest to a given point.
--- Allyn Jackson
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