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Factors Found in 200-Digit RSA Challenge
diodesign writes "The two unique prime factors of a 200-digit number have been discovered by researchers at Bonn University (Germany) and the CWI (Netherlands). The number is the largest integer yet factored with a general purpose algorithm and was one of a series of such numbers issued as a challenge by security company RSA security in March 1991 in order to track the real-world difficulty of factoring such numbers, used in the public-key encryption algorithm RSA. RSA-200 beats the previous record number 11281+1 (176 digits, factored on May 2nd, 2005), and RSA-576 (174 digits, factored on December 3rd, 2003)."
If someone claims to have found a better factoring method, then it's easier for RSA to check that p,q < n and p*q = n, than to read his algorithm and analysis and award a prize based on that. (Imagine how many crackpots would apply with 100 pages long "proofs").