Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

If the security level is artificially limited to 40 bits as the article suggests, then it is not good for securing any communications. It was relatively easy to crack DES-56 at rest before the turn of the century. A teraflop machine can defeat 40 bit encryption on the order of seconds.

Edit: fixed the incorrect "RSA-56" encryption. Thanks graderjs.




I think you might mean DES-56, or RC5, but not RSA.


To be fair you could probably break 56 bit RSA with a pen and paper.


Pen and paper? I doubt it. You're welcome to try (show working ;p ;) xx) here's a sample RSA-56 problem I created for you:

39551945224675453 (56-bit semiprime)


I imagine that technically RSA-56 would be easy to crack as well.


Yes, good catch. I did mean DES-56. I got the encryption name confused with the company that issued the challenge. The RSA algorithm is completely different.




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: