4 ms·
To clarify, this is not a new factoring record for products of two primes. RSA-768, a 232-digit number (22 digits longer) was factored in 2009, and that record
by randomwalker 13y ago
To clarify, this is not a new factoring record for products of two primes. RSA-768, a 232-digit number (22 digits longer) was factored in 2009, and that record still stands. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_numbers#RSA-768 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_numbers#RSA-768
The algorithm used here is GNFS (general number field sieve), which is the same algorithm that's been used for about two decades. In other words, this has no impact on the security of RSA.
More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_factorization_records http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_factorization_records
- pbsd 13y agoWhile it does have no impact in the expected complexity of factoring larger keys, this kind of thing is informative of the maturity of public factoring software: a single person with (presumably) access to a number of machines can pull off this kind of job on their own. Given the number of things that can go wrong in a complex method like the NFS, this is noteworthy.
- wslh 13y agoHow many servers does Google have? from search results it seems more than 1 million. I don't know the details of the algorithm but can we assume that Google can factor 20 bits more?
- jrochkind1 13y agoThe answer to "I don't know what I'm talking about, but can I assume..." is always 'no'.
- wslh 13y agoYou are wrong, my intuition was correct, the algorithm is pretty parallelizable and I worked in the computer security field. I wrote an speculation based on the difficulty to read and understand papers before this post is gone.
- jrochkind1 13y agoSee, now you haven't assumed it, you've researched it. But are you saying Google could factor all that... if they took all their servers that they ordinarily use for their business, turned their business off, and instead used them to factor an RSA key?