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TWIRL: Are 1024-bit RSA Keys Unsafe?

Posted by jamie on from the upward-not-forward-and-always... dept.

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.

2 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Re:password by Alsee · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Damn it! That's the combination to my suitcase!

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  2. Re:Xbox by evilviper · · Score: 0, Redundant
    I honestly don't think that the common person has much to worry about if 1024 encryption is hard to crack right now.

    Leading up to the year 2000, we were hearing lots of stories where people weren't thinking far enough ahead. Saying that using a 1024-bit key is like saying 2 digits is enough for storing the year...

    In a few years, you might be unplesantly surprised by the usefulness of the information that you encrypted with a smaller key.
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