| What would happen if you publish publicly? The cat's already out of the bag, they could not possibly want anything more from you, the info is out in the open. Obviously, this isn't ethical but math isn't illegal so there would be no legal consequences. You would be infamous. No, I think this is a danger to you as long as you, and only you know about it. Now, in the case you were to immediately publish this after you find out,same thing, you'd be safe. The fallout would be sub-optimal though, you would gain no immediate cash, but you would gain notoriety (maybe not the best kind) and you would give NSA and other intelligence agencies who presumably collected encrypted data for later deciphering. The internet security would probably be compromised for a couple of months, until new algos would be in place. I am not a cryptographer and I just have minimal understanding of these things, but I'll take a crack at saying what could be done: 1) Tell no one. POC is sufficient to deomnstrate it working. Ethical path goto 4 Unethical path: 2) Build a helper program that can easily crack keys on demand 3) Put it out on the darknet that you decrypt stuff for a steep fee. Get rich. 4) Publish the finding, do not provide the algo, focus on maintaining anonymity and having impeccable OPSEC. Provide proof. This will mean that everybody knows how unsafe their infrastructure is and there will be maximum effort to move everything to something else. But the algo is still contained and people can not yet have the power, _you_ have it. This, of course exposes you to maximal risks but also maximizes your potential financial reward. Maybe someone will soon find a way to crack it too, and then your show is off. Or maybe they will never find it and you remain a mystery, the _one_guy who could brake prime factoring. (unlikely, considering the number of smart people on this earth) |