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“This destroys the RSA cryptosystem”

eprint.iacr.org

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Re: “This destroys the RSA cryptosystem”

#61

The author of this paper is Claus P. Schnorr[1], of Schnorr signature fame. The paper has almost the same title as a 2017 draft paper[2] of his. The “This destroyes the RSA cryptosystem” quote is not in the linked paper abstract. This seems fishy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claus_P._Schnorr [2] https://www.math.uni-frankfurt.de/~dmst/research/papers/SVP9...

[deleted]

Re: “This destroys the RSA cryptosystem”

#62
post #25

Given the claims I would have wanted the paper to include factoring for some of the known rsa public keys to demonstrate feasible time.

I agree, at this point I'm way out of my depth so I'm waiting for folks who know cryptography inside and out to give their comment

Re: “This destroys the RSA cryptosystem”

#63
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case it's funny to think... NSA could have sat on this for years. Though that would be a really hard secret to keep.

RSA has always been a lot weaker than it seems at first... I mean, people have been moving from 1024 to 2048 bit primes... The biggest number I could conceivably brute force is probably about 2^50. Maybe 2^60 with a big budget, or 2^65 with a team of ASIC designers. The mere fact that 2^1024 is considered risky tells you how far from ideal RSA is!!

It's for various reasons, but one of them is that, from an attacker perspective, you don't have to strictly solve the factorization problem. You just need to be able to crack a tiny fraction of the keys in a reasonable amount of time in order for RSA at that key length to be considered unsafe to use. In that sense the attacker gets the benefit of best-case complexity.

Re: “This destroys the RSA cryptosystem”

#64
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case it's funny to think... NSA could have sat on this for years. Though that would be a really hard secret to keep.

I've held the theory that if anybody found something like fast prime factoring or a P = NP proof, they'd get assassinated pretty quickly. It'd be in basically every government's interest to get the knowledge, then make sure nobody else has it.

I’ve had similar thoughts, but walked them back to “oh, they’d probably keep it to themselves or drop it in the NSA’s amnesty box.”

Re: “This destroys the RSA cryptosystem”

#65
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case it's funny to think... NSA could have sat on this for years. Though that would be a really hard secret to keep.

RSA has always been a lot weaker than it seems at first... I mean, people have been moving from 1024 to 2048 bit primes... The biggest number I could conceivably brute force is probably about 2^50. Maybe 2^60 with a big budget, or 2^65 with a team of ASIC designers. The mere fact that 2^1024 is considered risky tells you how far from ideal RSA is!!

According to RSA Factoring Challenge 829 bits were broken recently [0]. The total computation time was roughly 2700 core-years [1].

I would consider 1024 bits risky in the following 10 years. 2048 bits probably won't ever be broken without significant algorithmic breakthrough or quantum computers.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_Factoring_Challenge

[1] https://lists.gforge.inria.fr/pipermail/cado-nfs-discuss/202...

Re: “This destroys the RSA cryptosystem”

#68

The author of this paper is Claus P. Schnorr[1], of Schnorr signature fame. The paper has almost the same title as a 2017 draft paper[2] of his. The “This destroyes the RSA cryptosystem” quote is not in the linked paper abstract. This seems fishy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claus_P._Schnorr [2] https://www.math.uni-frankfurt.de/~dmst/research/papers/SVP9...

> The paper has the same title as a 2017 draft paper Not quite the same title. He has papers with similar titles since at least 2010. I wanted to say thanks - this document linked to on his wikipedia page was unexpectedly fascinating! NSA, patents, conspiracies.. https://marc.info/?l=cypherpunks&m=95280154624588&w=2

Be careful, cypherpunks is a fascinating rabit hole; you can easily fall in and forever alter your perspective.

Re: “This destroys the RSA cryptosystem”

#69
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This proves the polynomial time bound."

If true... Hot damn! There's NP-Hard problems that if we had polynomial time solutions for we could vastly improve the quality of life on earth.

Integer factoring is in a fairly sparse in-between zone between polynomial and NP Hard problems. This is why quantum computers can have a near exponential speedup from them (disregarding this claimed result) and only a polynomial speedup for NP Hard problems. So even if this result holds it can't be converted into a fast solution for all NP Hard problems.

Re: “This destroys the RSA cryptosystem”

#70
post #35
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case it's funny to think... NSA could have sat on this for years. Though that would be a really hard secret to keep.

I'd always figured they'd have a (useful) quantum computer sitting in the basement of Ft. Meade at some point, and it's existence would be Top Secret with whatever codeword means "if this leaks, or we think it'll leak, we just assassinate you"

Why not just put it somewhere far away instead? You could even double up the benefits by picking a cold place to help keep your equipment temps down https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Xkeyscore-worldmap.j...
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