As one of the people quoted in the article..... You read it wrong. Go read the article again. "RSA129" is close to being broken. This is only a *SINGLE* RSA modulus. There are an infinite number of them. We are about to crack only one. It's taken us 8 months of work, so far, and this is only about 420 bits. Factoring is an exponential problem, so adding a small number of bits will greatly increase the amount of time needed to factor it. So, to answer your questions: a) It will prove that the 384-bit (causal-grade) PGP key is not safe, and that a 512-bit key is still somewhat safe, and that a 1024-bit key is still very safe! b) Yes, there are some govermental agencies helping with the factoring. For example, I've seen mail come in from lbl.gov, and a bunch of nasa sites, and probably a number of others. But they are only helping factor *THIS ONE NUMBER*. Data for this can only be used to help factor multiples of RSA129, but it will not help factor any other RSA modulus. I hope this answers your questions, and hopefully clears up a lot of misconceptions you clearly had when asking your questions. (I hope that many others didn't come to the same conclusions when reading that article -- I know that I didn't, but then again, I know whats going on ;-) -derek Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, G MIT Media Laboratory Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) PGP key available from pgp-public-keys@pgp.mit.edu warlord@MIT.EDU PP-ASEL N1NWH