Incoming links: Discrete logarithm
This is the discrete logarithm problem where the group is a cyclic group.
In this case, the problem becomes equivalent to reversing modular exponentiation.
This computational problem forms the basis for Diffie-Hellman key exchange, because modular exponentiation can be efficiently computed, but no known way exists to efficiently compute the reverse function.
This is natural question because both integer factorization and discrete logarithm are the basis for the most popular public-key cryptography systems as of 2020 (RSA and Diffie-Hellman key exchange respectively), and both are NP-intermediate. Why not use something more provenly hard?
- cs.stackexchange.com/questions/356/why-hasnt-there-been-an-encryption-algorithm-that-is-based-on-the-known-np-hard "Why hasn't there been an encryption algorithm that is based on the known NP-Hard problems?"