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> http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/05/biztech/articles/02encr.html
>
> Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
>
>
> May 2, 1999
>
> Israeli Scientist Reports Discovery of Advance in Code Breaking
>
> By JOHN MARKOFF n Israeli computer scientist is expected to shake up
> the world of cryptography this week when he introduces a design for
> a device that could quickly unscramble computer-generated codes that
> until now have been considered secure enough for financial and
> government communications.
>
> In a paper to be presented Tuesday in Prague, the computer scientist,
> Adi Shamir, one of the world's foremost cryptographers, will
> describe a machine, not yet built, that could vastly improve the
> ability of code breakers to decipher codes thought to be unbreakable
> in practical terms. They are used to protect everything from
> financial transactions on the Internet to account balances stored in
> so-called smart cards.
>
>
> Shamir's idea would combine existing technology into a special
> computer that could be built for a reasonable cost, said several
> experts who have seen the paper. It is scheduled to be presented at
> an annual meeting of the International Association for Cryptographic
> Research, which begins on Monday.
>
> The name of Mr. Shamir, a computer scientist at Weizmann Institute
> of Science in Rehovoth, Israel, is the "S" in R. S. A., the
> encryption design that has become the international standard for
> secure transmissions. He is a co-inventor of R.S.A. -- with Ronald
> Rivest of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Leonard
> Adleman of the University of Southern California.
>
> R.S.A. is known as public-key cryptography. In this system, a person
> has a public key and a private key. The public key is used to
> scramble a message and may be used by anyone, so it can, even should,
> be made public. But the private key that is needed to unscramble the
> message must be kept secret by the person who holds it.
>
> R.S.A., like many public-key systems, is based on the fact that it
> is immensely difficult and time-consuming for even the most powerful
> computers to factor large numbers. But Mr. Shamir's machine would
> make factoring numbers as long as about 150 digits much easier, thus
> making it much simpler to reveal messages scrambled with public-key
> encryption methods.
>
> A number of advances in factoring have been made in the last five
> years. But most of them are the result of applying brute force to the
> problem.
>
> When R.S.A. was created in 1977, Mr. Shamir and his colleagues
> challenged anyone to break the code. Employing 1970's technology,
> they said, a cryptographer would need 40 quadrillion years to factor
> a public key, and they predicted that even with anticipated advances
> in computer science and mathematics, no one would be able to break
> the code until well into the next century.
>
> In fact, a message the trio had encoded with a 129-digit key
> successfully withstood attack for only 17 years. It was factored by
> an international team of researchers in 1994.
>
> Using Mr. Shamir's machine, cracking the 140-digit number would be
> reduced to the difficulty of cracking a key about 80 digits long --
> relatively easy by today's standards.
>
> Researchers said that if his machine worked it would mean that
> cryptographic systems with keys of 512 bits or less -- that is, keys
> less than about 150 digits long -- would be vulnerable in the future,
> an exposure that would have seemed unthinkable only five years ago.
> The longer 1,024-bit keys that are available today would not be
> vulnerable at present.
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