Is this for real or a troll??? On Mon, 31 Mar 1997, Anonymous wrote:
*** London Times, 30/03/1997 ***
Factoring problem broken:
One of the main systems used by computer privacy programs around the world such as those used on the internet to prevent third parties eavesdropping on credit card transactions has been proven insecure, The RSA algorithm, based on the difficulty of "factoring" large numbers appears to have a weakness, a press release by the IACR (International Association for cryptologic research) reads as follows:
"Leading researcher Ari Lenstra last night announced major progress had been made towards a solution to the factoring problem, a result obtained by Sergei Ripov, researcher at an obscure university in the former Soviet union, shows conclusively that there exists a solution to the problem that is of polynomial time complexity, although this solution has yet to be found this signals the beginning of the end for a number of cryptosystems based on this problem, please note a trivial solution to factoring also suggests a trivial solution to the ECDLP and therefore a number of other systems such as Diffie-Hellman and the El-Gamal group of cryptosystems should be considered insecure"
We were unable to contact the IACR for futher information. The leading internet products company Netscape refused to comment saying only "We regularly review data security issues concerning all of our products".
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