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I think progress against RSA is more likely, unless Shor happens first and kills everyone. I also hope to see a O(n^2) matrix multiplication algorithm within my lifetime. My point was not to defend RSA, but to point out that Cohn's argument could be reused for most of our current primitives.

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I figured that'd be your answer.

I feel like the idea that you'd use ECC out of concern for advances in factoring or conventional discrete log isn't my own, but I'm not careful enough with this stuff to know the best thing to cite.

As always, I comment on crypto stuff principally to see if I can goad you into correcting me. :)

Well, I suppose you could cite Miller and Koblitz on that (mostly Miller). This was the mid-80s, when progress in index-calculus algorithms was in full force. So they introduce elliptic curves, and basically say 'look, this problem seems to be immune to these classes of algorithms, which seem to be getting better all the time, so let's use it instead'. With some important caveats discovered in the meantime, they have been right so far.

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