> Eric Cordian[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>
> michael cardenas wrote:
>
> > What was the bit length of the rsa key that they factored?
>
> I probably should have highlighted this with more than an "Oh my" at the
> end of the exerpt, but the point of the quote was to poke some fun at the
> legendary ability of the British IT Press to get breaking computer stories
> almost totally wrong.
>
> Unless there are developments I don't yet know about, Neo was working on
> the RSA Challenge, which has nothing to do with Microsoft, and Neo hasn't
> factored anything yet.
>
> Sorry for any confusion.
>
----------------
Neo has been ping-ponging between working on RSA-576 and the
Xbox signing key (2048 bits).
Here's the official verbiage from RSA:
> Contrary to reports, the RSA-576 challenge number has not been
> factored.
> The RSA Factoring Challenge requires contestants to find two prime
> numbers which, when multiplied together, produce the challenge
> number.
>
> The Neo Project has been working to find the factors of the RSA-576
> challenge number. They have not found the factors, but did publish
> a way to construct the number as the sum of three squares. This is
> mathematically interesting, but not a factorization.
>
> Some news outlets have erroneously reported this as a factorization.
>
Information on the RSA Challenges can be found at:
http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/challenges/index.html
---------------
Peter Trei
