The RSA Factoring Challenge

(Image by Paul Schadler)

I started thinking about the RSA Factoring challenge the other day when I received my RSA SecureID fob to log into the UPMC network offsite. According to the RSA website, “The RSA Factoring challenge is an effort, sponsored by RSA Laboratories, to learn about the actual difficulty of factoring large numbers of the type used in RSA keys. A set of eight challenge numbers, ranging in size from 576 bits to 2048 bits is posted here. Each number is the product of two large primes, similar to the modulus of an RSA key pair.” So if you feel like trying to make yourself an easy $200,000, try to factor the following number as the product of two primes:

25195908475657893494027183240048398571429282126204
03202777713783604366202070759555626401852588078440
69182906412495150821892985591491761845028084891200
72844992687392807287776735971418347270261896375014
97182469116507761337985909570009733045974880842840
17974291006424586918171951187461215151726546322822
16869987549182422433637259085141865462043576798423
38718477444792073993423658482382428119816381501067
48104516603773060562016196762561338441436038339044
14952634432190114657544454178424020924616515723350
77870774981712577246796292638635637328991215483143
81678998850404453640235273819513786365643912120103
97122822120720357

If you’re interested in learning about the history of RSA, which is an algorithm for public key encryption that helps to make internet security tick, you should read thisWikipedia article or check out the RSA Laboratories website.