Ponder This Challenge - October 2017 - IBM security polynomial

Ponder This Challenge:

The solutions for the polynomial equation

131839*x^5+17585*x^4-13258*x^3-18104*x^2-419356*x+52715 = 0 (mod 11100101)

encode something related to IBM security, with a single bit error.

What does it encode? What is the wrong bit? And how is it related to IBM Security?

Hint (23/10): View the solutions in Binary.

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Solution

• Click here to view the solution

  Write the five roots of the polynomial in binary, with '1' for 1, and '.' for 0.

  4597286 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 10835281 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 O 0 1 10909046 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 10835285 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 5592661 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1

  The 'O' marks the erroneous bit that should be 1 instead of zero to spell out QRadar, the IBM security information and event management solution.

Solvers

• Reiner Martin (01/10/17 11:32 PM IDT)
• Ariel Landau (02/10/17 06:11 AM IDT)
• Nyles Heise (05/10/17 06:08 AM IDT)
• Michael Rosola (05/10/17 10:51 PM IDT)
• Michael Catalano-Johnson (06/10/17 06:22 PM IDT)
• George Barnett (07/10/17 09:43 PM IDT)
• Florian Fischer (08/10/17 21:58 PM IDT)
• Alper Halbutogullari (09/10/17 10:37 AM IDT)
• Tim Lewis (10/10/17 06:21 PM IDT)
• Kaifei Chen (12/10/17 09:58 AM IDT)
• David Greer (16/10/17 02:11 AM IDT)
• Dieter Beckerle (22/10/17 04:23 PM IDT)
• Adam Daire (22/10/17 07:43 PM IDT)
• Andreas Knüpfer (23/10/17 09:06 PM IDT)
• Wolfgang Kais (25/10/17 01:16 AM IDT)
• Károly Csalogány (25/10/17 01:45 PM IDT)
• Kang Jin Cho (26/10/17 12:30 PM IDT)
• Motty Porat (26/10/17 03:17 PM IDT)
• Steven Langerwerf (27/10/17 03:47 PM IDT)
• Rickard Björklund (29/10/17 08:27 PM IDT)
• Serge Batalov (29/10/17 09:04 PM IDT)
• Shirish Chinchalkar (31/10/17 02:31 AM IDT)