RSA: Over 40 Years Old and Still Amazing! — Let’s Crack It
I really dislike those CAPTCHA puzzles, and especially when there’s a little bit of a traffic light that you have to select, or where I’m asked to find the crosswalk — in the UK we would call them Zebra crossings, and they don’t look too much like the ones you get in the USA. So I had to smile yesterday when I logged in to a crypto conference and it gave me:
So, after more than 40 years, RSA is still alive and kicking. In this article I will give you an RSA challenge, and — hopefully — you will be able to crack it and find the rock band:
Can you find the rock band?
N=879509040449463763008386484793372267, cipher=850431005415590313843011081245086829For me. The RSA method is a thing of beauty. For over 40 years it has protected users against cybercrime more than virtually everything else. It is still at the core of PKI, and protects users against fake sites, it proves their identities, and it stops others from other spying on their activities. While elliptic curve methods are beating it in most things, it is still there, and it is still a winner.
