One Way Functions

• Yes, this is math, but there isn’t much of it and the concepts here are applied broadly throughout networking and security

• Formally stated, a one way function is some function, f, for which the inverse, f’, is not known

• • If y=f(x), there is no known way of calculating x from y
  • I.e., you can’t reliably perform x=f’(y)

• An example of a one way function is the multiplication of two large prime numbers.

• • Its easy to find the product of two large primes
  • • I.e., n=p1p2
  • Given just n, its very hard to find p1 and p2
  • • There are a few ways of doing this, but all are compute intensive