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?"