On Mon, 18 Sep 2017 16:48:29 -0700, Phil Smith wrote:
>
>If we assume that "encrypted" means "using accepted strong encryption", not
>"Bob's toy encryption system that any moron could break", then I'm perfectly
>comfortable with the several billion years of effort required to decrypt the
>data-I'll be dead by then. You don't find that to be long enough?
>
Live long and prosper.
Beware the march of technology:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Words_are_Squeamish_Ossifrage
The decryption of the 1977 ciphertext involved the factoring of a 129-digit
number, RSA-129, in order to recover the plaintext.
Ron Rivest estimated in 1977 that factoring a 125-digit semiprime would require
40 quadrillion years, using the best algorithm known and the fastest computers
of the day.
...
It was solved in 1993–94 by a large joint computer project co-ordinated by
Derek Atkins, Michael Graff, Arjen Lenstra and Paul Leyland. More than 600
volunteers contributed CPU time from about 1,600 machines (two of which were
fax machines) over six months. The coordination was done via the Internet and
was one of the first such projects.
...
In 2015, the same RSA-129 number was factored in about one day, with the
CADO-NFS open source implementation of number field sieve, using a commercial
cloud computing service for about $30.
-- gil
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