Yes, but also no. We use giant prime numbers for cryptography because the more factors it has, the weaker the encryption becomes (because now there’s more than one answer for A * ? = B)
This actually is the main application for 2-almost primes. For example, instead of having an arbitrarily large prime be used for the hash, you could use a very large 2-almost prime as a key with its factors being used as 2 layers of hashing. I know there’s better uses, but the more I try to learn about cryptography the more confused I get
Applications like most of cryptography?
Yes, but also no. We use giant prime numbers for cryptography because the more factors it has, the weaker the encryption becomes (because now there’s more than one answer for A * ? = B)
This actually is the main application for 2-almost primes. For example, instead of having an arbitrarily large prime be used for the hash, you could use a very large 2-almost prime as a key with its factors being used as 2 layers of hashing. I know there’s better uses, but the more I try to learn about cryptography the more confused I get