I've factored the RSA keys of a Certificate Authority from the 90s
A researcher successfully factored 512-bit RSA keys from legacy root certificates found in 1990s-era browser archives. The project highlights the evolution of cryptographic standards and the vulnerability of early internet security protocols to modern computing power.
Why it matters
This demonstrates the importance of updating cryptographic standards as computing power increases, as legacy systems remain vulnerable to decryption.
I’ve been thinking about the security of RSA lately. RSA’s cryptography relies on the difficulty of factoring a large semiprime number, but what “large” means is an interesting question. The Web PKI deprecated 1024-bit RSA over a decade ago, and while I don’t know of anyone factoring a key of that size, it’s within the realm of possibility for a government or other organization with a large number of computers. Just a few days ago, someone factored the 862-bit RSA-260 key from the RSA factoring challenge. That’s the largest factorization I’m aware of. Today, the world uses RSA of at least 2048 bits, but even that will be deprecated soon with the risk of quantum computers in the future.
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