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List:       isn
Subject:    [ISN] RSA Crypto Challenge Sets New Security Benchmark
From:       mea culpa <jericho () DIMENSIONAL ! COM>
Date:       1999-08-31 21:38:11
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[Moderator: Sorry for the break in news. I have returned and will be
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http://www.rsa.com/pressbox/html/990826.html

RSA Crypto Challenge Sets New Security Benchmark

512-Bit Public Key Factored by International Team of Researchers

SAN MATEO, CA, August 26, 1999 -- RSA Laboratories, a division of RSA Data
Security, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Security Dynamics
Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: SDTI), today announced that an international
team of cryptographic researchers has been awarded first prize in the
latest round of the RSA Factoring Challenge after successfully determining
the two prime numbers used to generate a single 512-bit RSA key.  The
result establishes a new benchmark for gauging the strength of RSA public
keys, and reconfirms RSA's ongoing recommendation for using 768-bit keys
as the minimum for achieving reliable security.

Factoring the 512-binary-bit key, equivalent to 155 decimal digits and
called RSA-155, took the team a total elapsed time of 5.2 months, not
including nine weeks needed for preliminary computations, and was
accomplished using 292 individual computers located at 11 different sites
in The Netherlands, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Australia and the
United States. Prior to this, the largest RSA key length to be factored
was 140 decimal digits long in February of this year. RSA's recommended
key lengths are 230 digits or more.

"Once again, advances in computer hardware and computational number theory
have reinforced RSA's longstanding assertion that longer key lengths are
necessary to provide reliable security," said Burt Kaliski, chief
scientist at RSA Laboratories.  "The various RSA challenges we sponsor are
very useful for tracking the cryptographic state of the art and gauging
the strength of the security provided by various key lengths."

The RSA Factoring Challenge encourages research into computational number
theory and the practical difficulty of factoring large integers. Cash
prizes are awarded to the participants who successfully complete the
factorization of an RSA number, intended as modest rewards for the hard
work of coordinating the resources required to surmount some of the very
difficult technical barriers encountered in factoring large integers.

These latest results were achieved using about 160 175-400-MHz SGI and Sun
workstations, eight 250-MHz SGI Origin 2000 processors, 120 300-450-MHz
Pentium II PCs and four 500-MHz Digital/Compaq CPUs, and required
approximately 8000 MIPS-years of CPU effort.  The specific approach used
to determine the prime factors was based on the work done to solve the
RSA-140 Challenge earlier this year.

More information on the RSA Factoring Challenge and other RSA challenges
can be found on the RSA web site at
http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/html/challenges.html.  More information on the
team of researchers completing the RSA-155 challenge can be obtained by
contacting Herman J.J.  te Riele, Herman.te.Riele@cwi.nl, Centre for
Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI), Kruislaan 413, 1098 SJ Amsterdam,
The Netherlands.

RSA Data Security, Inc

RSA Data Security, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Security Dynamics
Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:  SDTI), is a leading supplier of software
components that secure electronic data, with more than 400 million copies
of RSA encryption and authentication technologies installed worldwide. RSA
technologies are part of existing and proposed standards for the Internet
and World Wide Web, ISO, ITU-T, ANSI, IEEE and are in use in business,
financial and electronic commerce networks around the globe. RSA develops
and markets platform-independent security components and related developer
kits, and provides comprehensive cryptographic consulting services. RSA
can be reached at http://www.rsa.com.


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