TITLE: Would a proof to the Riemann Hypothesis affect security?
QUESTION [57 upvotes]: If a solution was found to the Riemann Hypothesis, would it have any effect on the security of things such as RSA protection? Would it make cracking large numbers easier?

REPLY [24 votes]: If RH is shown to be false, it would mean that the distribution of primes has more structure than anticipated (or a different type of structure, such as unusual correlations where independence was expected) and conceivably that could be leveraged for cryptanalysis of RSA or other number theoretic codes.
If RH is shown to be true, it is likely to be as a result of proving that some symmetries or algebraic structures connected to prime numbers, structures that are presently conjectural and not precisely understood, do exist. There are such structures that exist for function fields and have applications to cryptography (Frobenius map, Weil pairings, and etale cohomology come to mind) and it's possible that the expected but currently undiscovered constructions in the number field case would also be useful for making or breaking codes.  
Of course any big leap in understanding of number theory would lead to a reconsideration of number theoretic algorithms in general, especially the ones in cryptography.