More on Bernstein's Number Field Sieve

Russ Nelson writes "Dan Bernstein has a response to Bernstein's NFS analyzed by Lenstra and Shamir, entitled Circuits for integer factorization. He notes that the issue of the cost of factorization is still open, and that it may in fact be inexpensive to factor 1024-bit keys. We don't know, and that's what his research is intended to explore."

Comments

Fascinating Discussion...

[gweihir]

... this is. I especially like the mixture of theoretical, practical and yet unknowen aspects of the whole problem.

My impression is that so far DJB has done a good job of being honest and clear. Although "the press" is sadly lacking in experts these days and often will not even notice they have not understood the problem. I have to admit that I did not quite follow
Lenstra-Shamir-Tomlinson-Tromer, but I think DJB's original proposal is still the best source on what is going on. No real surprises so far for practical purposes, but I will follow this closely.

Incidentally I don't fear for my 4096/1024 bit ElGamal/DSA gpg key in the near future. I am confident that installing a keyboard sniffer without me noticing is far easier than breaking that key.