At 3:01 PM +0200 6/11/08, Jean-Marc Desperrier wrote: >I might have reacted a bit too strongly on this news.
+1 At 2:56 PM +0200 6/11/08, Jean-Marc Desperrier wrote: >Also I'd need to search for more reference, but I've been reading that >the factorisation of the 2^1039-1 Mersenne number >http://eprint.iacr.org/2007/205 >is computationally equivalent to factoring an ordinary 700 bit number. ...is *estimated* to be computationally equivalent. Read that part of the paper carefully. The authors are very careful people, and they said exactly what they meant. Until the authors (or someone using their methods) do an actual factorization in the range of 700-800 bits, we won't know how good their estimate is. The estimates in RFC 3766 change with each additional data point. Silverman could be right and the second step in factoring a 1024-bit number is essentially impossible; he could be wrong and it is tractable; he could be right for current methods and someone could come up with a better method. Certainly, the group who wrote the paper above are working on new methods, and might continue to do so in the future. Note, however, that they seem to be about the only group who is publishing any results from their efforts. That could either mean they are the only group working on it, or that other groups working on it are not getting publishable results. _______________________________________________ dev-tech-crypto mailing list dev-tech-crypto@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-tech-crypto
