Quoting the original article: A mighty number falls
Mathematicians and number buffs have their records. And today, an international team has broken a long-standing one in an impressive feat of calculation. On March 6, computer clusters from three institutions \u2013 the EPFL, the University of Bonn and NTT in Japan -- reached the end of eleven months of strenuous calculation, churning out the prime factors of a well-known, hard-to-factor number that is a whopping 307 digits long. "This is the largest 'special' hard-to-factor number factored to date," explains EPFL cryptology professor Arjen Lenstra. (The number is 'special' because it has a special mathematical form -- it is close to a power of two.) The news of this feat will grab the attention of information security experts and may eventually lead to changes in encryption techniques. http://www.physorg.com/news98962171.html My take: clearly, 1024 bits is no longer sufficient for RSA use for high value applications, though this has been on the horizon for some time. Presumably, it would be a good idea to use longer keys for all applications, including "low value" ones, provided that the slowdown isn't prohibitive. As always, I think the right rule is "encrypt until it hurts, then back off until it stops hurting"... -- Perry E. Metzger [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
