In 1999, when longtime MIT professor Ron Rivest created a cryptographic puzzle to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the school’s Laboratory for

This MIT puzzle was believed to be unsolvable for 35 years. Here’s how Bernard Fabrot cracked it 15 years early.

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2021-06-26 09:30:07

In 1999, when longtime MIT professor Ron Rivest created a cryptographic puzzle to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the school’s Laboratory for Computer Science, he said it would be another 35 years before anyone could possibly solve it.

Rivest said the puzzle would take 35 years of continuous computing, along with switching out the computer performing it with the next fastest model each year. He said it would require a virtually unimaginable number of steps.

What he didn’t expect was for all of the work to be finished in a few years — and a decade and a half ahead of schedule.

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