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TWIRL: Are 1024-bit RSA Keys Unsafe?

This came across the Interesting-People list today: a preliminary draft of a paper, co-authored by Adi Shamir, that proposes new hardware for factoring large numbers. It is claimed that a machine could be built which would be "3-4 orders of magnitude more cost effective than the best previously published designs," and that "the NFS sieving step for 1024-bit RSA keys can be completed in less than a year by a $10M device." For background, here's a primer on key length in symmetric and asymmetric crypto.

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  1. Are 1024-bit RSA Keys Unsafe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Of course they are. I just read an article the other day on how to file them down and make a master key out of them.

    Slashdot and their damn dupes ;)