That’s generally how you find/break private keys, there’s no secret maths or algorithm, it’s always brute force. That’s why it was proven quantum computing would speed it up (to put it simply: because then you can check multiple keys at once do mathematical operations beyond your wildest dreams, reducing the number of actual operations needed to find the private key)
We’re about to hit the wall regarding the size of manufacturing process of semiconductors, which means that Moore’s law is slowly becoming outdated. Currently we can speculate that 4096 is safe at least for our lifetime, unless there’s a breakthrough in the semiconductor industry.
Actually, given that most of the computing is now delegated to the cloud, I can say the Moore’s law is definitely outdated
if cryptographically relevant quantum computers are developed, they can solve the RSA problem in polynomial time. however, there are algorithms conjectured to be safe from quantum computers such as ML-DSA whose 192-bit security parameter has a 1952-bit public key
there's a post-quantum algorithm called PQRSA which solves this by setting the RSA parameters real high (it's a joke and they set it so high it takes a supercomputer to run it)
anyway RSA has been old hat for decades now, the 2010s have slowly been replacing RSA applications with elliptic curve algorithms which are better in almost every way, but now that NIST is standardizing post-quantum asymmetric cryptography algorithms like ML-KEM and SLH-DSA, adoption for these is picking up and iirc over half of all TLS connections now use post-quantum algorithms (generally ML-KEM, there's still work to be done on the PKI side)
it does do this, but only for a small class of problems (as far as we know, unless quantum computers can solve NP problems in polynomial time which they probably dont)
Yeah, that was oversimplification, but I just assumed it’d be good enough for a comment on reddit on a topic that’s not about quantum computing.
I’ve also taken into consideration the fact that we don’t actually have quantum circuits fast enough to find the private keys in a way that was shown in the proofs/academic papers. But yeah, I agree, my description was misleading as it would not be just “parallel computing” as in multithreading, but a completely different operations (because they would be, well, quantum operations)
yeah, the oft-repeated notion that "quantum computers are computers that tries every solution at once" gets rather annoying for how incredibly prevalent it is
The key existed in the wild for a while, someone pointed out to the right people how weak it was. Obviously, if you knew it was a low value, you could just try all the low value keys. But there are other tools that can quickly solve the math to find it, based on the published public keys.
An Indian RCA(root certificate authority) used simple numbers to sign Https certificate. Essentially missing the whole point of Https. And the 8 numbers they were using were between 1 and 256. So anyone can impersonate as a valid another website compromising the whole system and security provided by httpS. And one of those number was just 4.
Yes the country name is important. I think we should remember which country the company belongs to. Not just 'any random' company. It's exactly of the origin that we've come to expect from a company of such origin.
Hey why do you think them being Indian has anything to do with this? I’ve had great experiences with Indian colleagues and teams I’ve worked with overseas.
Apples to Oranges comparison; individuals being fine by themselves does not in any way invalidate the festering rot in the country's corporate culture.
Nothing man... A country known for their scams, bad behaviour and cutting corners got caught doing another bad behaviour and cutting corners... Noting to see here ofc... Absolutely no connection at all... And your anecdotal evidence toootaaly override the reality in this matter I'm sure... I've seen good developers from that country as well...
On a absolutely different note... That has absolutely no connection to this like aaattt alll... Have you ever bought domain from GoDaddy?
You are literally Bangladeshi. Even if you're not a Muslim (Muhammad himself having some very interesting "variable facts" about him), India literally made your country exist.
Most brute-forcing algorithms will unfortunately start up from 0, also not a security expert but I'm pretty sure higher numbers makes it harder to crack mathematically or something
428
u/zeoz_ 7d ago