[12529] in Cypherpunks
Re: RSA-129...what's the big deal?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Derek Atkins)
Wed Apr 27 01:39:58 1994
To: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 26 Apr 94 22:16:02 -0700.
<199404270516.WAA18438@netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 94 01:33:38 EDT
From: Derek Atkins <warlord@MIT.EDU>
[stuff deleted]
> That is, it took MMA only 0.066 second, mostly overhead, to multiply
> your two factors to the product you gave.
[more stuff deleted]
> So, this took slightly longer, 4194 seconds, or a bit over an hour,
> but MMA had no problem factoring this number. Why such a big deal?
Cute, Tim! (Uhh, you're about 3 weeks too late for this ;-)
Actually, the *first* thing I did when I received these factors was
fire up a trusty mathematics package and verify the product: bc. :-)
Although I admit that RSA-129 dprobably does not have any cosmic
significance with regards to protecting any vital data, it is a data
point: it is the largest number of its type to ever have been
factored. As a result, it tells us that 425-bit keys are not secure,
and keys not much bigger are not secure, either, today!
But you are right, we are learning alot about factoring and
distributed problems as a result of this exercise (at least I feel
that I have learned alot).
-derek
Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, G MIT Media Laboratory
Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board (SIPB)
Home page: http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/warlord/home_page.html
warlord@MIT.EDU PP-ASEL N1NWH PGP key available
