Integer programming and cryptography

Not long ago it was reported m the press that Adi Shamir, from the Weizmann Institute of Science m Israel, had broken one of the first public key cryptosystems, the Merkle-Hellman knapsack System Saentific American (August 1982, p 79) reported maccurately that He did so by provmg that a mathematical problem called the knap sack problem, which had been considered e^ceedmgly dtfficult, am be solved rapidly by a simple Computer algonthm