Illegal primes: what is it?

Question

I don’t know if you know this situation, but sometimes I look at a page from one page on Wikipedia. Therefore, I also saw this one about illegal primes. I read the article, and it sounds very interesting, but I really did not understand what it really was.

As far as I understand, illegal primes are primes that can be somehow used to create malicious code? But how? Are there any other examples than in the article?

And what is their use in real life?

Answer 1

The DeCSS program is used as an example in this article. This program decrypts DVDs, which, according to US federal law and international treaties, are a crime. Therefore, it is illegal to own or distribute this particular source code.

However, the source code can be expressed as a series of binary numbers, such as ...

11100101 10001000 00001000 00000000 01001010 11110010

Which means 252372412549874 in decimal. If the binary code above was illegal, then the decimal number 252372412549874 would be an "illegal number." An invalid prime is a number in a subset of illegal numbers that is usually prime.

The fact that something like DeCSS code is also an ordinal value representing an integer contradicts the concept of its illegality. After all, how can the abstract concept of a certain whole be illegal? The term "illegal number" is an oxymoron designed to indicate that laws are exaggerated when they try to control human artifacts that coincide with abstract concepts. This is an act of decrypting DVDs that can be applied, rather than owning or knowing an integer in a number line.

Answer 2

No, these are not numbers that can generate malicious code.

The fact is that some types of code are illegal for distribution in the United States; for example, code designed to break copy protection in films. Activists like to say that it’s ridiculous to prohibit the distribution of code, and this is just a bunch of letters and numbers. People like to do things like print a code on a T-shirt and wear it, or sing in a song to indicate how these restrictions don't make sense.

Illegal numbers are numbers that encode such an illegal code. Theoretically, writing down such a number and passing it on is a crime. Illegal primes are just an interesting subset of such numbers, since databases of primes and large primes are useful, it is easy to imagine that illegal primes will be published innocently - does that mean the crime was committed?

It really is just a thought experiment to show how ridiculous these laws are.

Answer 3

Computers work with numbers. The file is just very large.

Sometimes these numbers are first.

In real life, their use is more political than practical.

Answer 4

This is simply an illegal number , which turns out to be simple.