[math-fun] We don't need no stinking factorizer to break RSA

From: Warren Smith

front page of NY Times just featured this paper

http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/064.pdf

which is hilarious! Just when you thought you'd seen the ultimate in human stupidity...

Shocking was the first word that came to mind, but hilarious followed shortly afterwards. If there's one thing that must be relearnt almost yearly, it's that, no matter how bullet-proof the maths is, the typical _implementation_ of crypto is often pathetically bad. Worse - it often remains bad after flaws have been highlighted. (E.g. the SSL library fiasco that Debian unwittingly uncovered, and suffered greatly from, a few years back still isn't satisfactorily fixed, despite it coming under worldwide scrutiny.) Phil