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An anonymous reader writes with a link to this Reuters story, from which he excerpts: "Italy's supreme court has upheld a ruling that said there was a link between a business executive's brain tumor and his heavy mobile phone usage, potentially opening the door to further legal claims. The court's decision flies in the face of much scientific opinion, which generally says there is not enough evidence to declare a link between mobile phone use and diseases such as cancer and some experts said the Italian ruling should not be used to draw wider conclusions about the subject. 'Great caution is needed before we jump to conclusions about mobile phones and brain tumors,' said Malcolm Sperrin, director of medical physics and clinical engineering at Britain's Royal Berkshire Hospital. The Italian case concerned company director Innocenzo Marcolini who developed a tumor in the left side of his head after using his mobile phone for 5-6 hours a day for 12 years. He normally held the phone in his left hand, while taking notes with his right hand. Marcolini developed a so-called neurinoma affecting a cranial nerve, which was apparently not cancerous but nevertheless required surgery that badly affected his quality of life."

fintler was the first of many to tell us about the ZDNetAsia and Philippine newspaper stories that proclaim that RSA encryption has been "cracked." This might make an entertaining movie plot but it isn't true. I bet cryptographers get hot tips like this from well-meaning amateurs all the time, but most of them don't get this much press. Here's a cleaned-up edit of what's been bouncing around your inboxes all day (read parts [F] and [I]), and for a briefer commentary by the "R" in RSA, read on.

Hi Jamie --

Thanks for checking with me.

A fellow by the name of Leo de Velez from the Phillipines had thought he had broken RSA, and a reporter colleague wrote up this story and published it. This is probably what you have heard about.

Mr. Velez also wrote to me with his ideas. Unfortunately for him, his approach is actually much *slower* than the naive approach to factoring by trial division by 2, 3, 4, .... His approach doesn't improve on any known techniques, and doesn't constitute a "break" of RSA at all.

If you write to Mr. Velez (leo at teammail dot com) he will confirm...

Thanks again for checking...

Feel free to quote me...

Cheers,
Ron Rivest

fintler was the first of many to tell us about the ZDNetAsia and Philippine newspaper stories that proclaim that RSA encryption has been "cracked." This might make an entertaining movie plot but it isn't true. I bet cryptographers get hot tips like this from well-meaning amateurs all the time, but most of them don't get this much press. Here's a cleaned-up edit of what's been bouncing around your inboxes all day (read parts [F] and [I]), and for a briefer commentary by the "R" in RSA, read on.

Hi Jamie --

Thanks for checking with me.

A fellow by the name of Leo de Velez from the Phillipines had thought he had broken RSA, and a reporter colleague wrote up this story and published it. This is probably what you have heard about.

Mr. Velez also wrote to me with his ideas. Unfortunately for him, his approach is actually much *slower* than the naive approach to factoring by trial division by 2, 3, 4, .... His approach doesn't improve on any known techniques, and doesn't constitute a "break" of RSA at all.

If you write to Mr. Velez (leo at teammail dot com) he will confirm...

Thanks again for checking...

Feel free to quote me...

Cheers,
Ron Rivest