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That is, it took MMA only 0.066 second, mostly overhead, to multiply your two factors to the product you gave. [more stuff deleted] So, this took slightly longer, 4194 seconds, or a bit over an hour, but MMA had no problem factoring this number. Why such a big deal?
Cute, Tim! (Uhh, you're about 3 weeks too late for this ;-) Actually, the *first* thing I did when I received these factors was fire up a trusty mathematics package and verify the product: bc. :-) Although I admit that RSA-129 dprobably does not have any cosmic significance with regards to protecting any vital data, it is a data point: it is the largest number of its type to ever have been factored. As a result, it tells us that 425-bit keys are not secure, and keys not much bigger are not secure, either, today! But you are right, we are learning alot about factoring and distributed problems as a result of this exercise (at least I feel that I have learned alot). -derek Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, G MIT Media Laboratory Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) Home page: http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/warlord/home_page.html warlord@MIT.EDU PP-ASEL N1NWH PGP key available