Someone styling themselves as "Monty Cantsin" writes:
This number is the product of two large primes: [big number deleted]
Yet, I believe that an enterprising individual will be able to factor it. Monty Cantsin
If your belief has any basis in reality, I'd like to hear what it is. Schneier gives estimates for factoring 2048 bit numbers using both the General Number Field Sieve and the Special Number Field Sieve. SNFS is by far the fastest, and with that it would take 4*10^14 MIPS-years. All of the computer power expended in the RSA Symmetric Key Challenges (DES, RC5-56, etc) up to this point amount to, generously, 10^7 MIPS-years. This is only one forty-millionth of power needed. It's been said that 'Those who will not do arithmetic are doomed to speak nonsense.' You are proving the truth of this. RSA has a substantial prize for factoring much smaller numbers. It's estimated, for example, that RSA-155 (about 512 bits), could be factored in 500,000 MIPS-years. Peter Trei ptrei@hotmail.com ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com