A formula used to turn ordinary data, or "plaintext," into a secret coded message known as "ciphertext." The ciphertext can reside in storage or travel over unsecure networks without its contents ...

There are problems that are in practice beyond the capabilities of even the most powerful versions of today’s computers imaginable. These successes could be taken to indicate that computation has no ...

A quantum computer algorithm that is used to find the prime factors in an encryption key. Created by applied mathematician Peter Shor in the mid-1990s, Shor's algorithm may be used to break the codes ...

In algorithms, as in life, negativity can be a drag. Consider the problem of finding the shortest path between two points on a graph — a network of nodes connected by links, or edges. Often, these ...