EVERYTHING GETS HACKED:
In 1991, RSA published a series of insanely long numbers to see if anyone could factor them. Somehow, one of them has just been factored for the first time.
The foundation of many cryptographic algorithms like RSA — algorithms that keep your online communications safe — is that… https://t.co/J4zVoBhXZE
— Whole Mars Catalog (@wholemars) September 3, 2026
More:
The foundation of many cryptographic algorithms like RSA — algorithms that keep your online communications safe — is that multiplying two huge prime numbers is easy, but starting with the product and figuring out which two primes made it is incredibly hard. That difficulty is what makes encryption impossible to crack.
One of those numbers RSA published (to challenge people to try and factor large numbers and see if the assumptions RSA was built on really were secure) was RSA-260: 260 digits, 862 bits. It sat unfactored for 35 years.
Today Eric Lu just posted a 130-digit number with the words:
“divides RSA-260”
And it does.
That single number is enough to factor RSA-260, apparently setting a new record for the largest RSA challenge number ever factored.
Now the really interesting question is: how the hell did he do it?
The previous record required enormous amounts of traditional CPU compute. Did he use a giant GPU cluster? Improvements to the number field sieve? AI to optimize some part of the attack? Some new technique entirely?
Nobody has any fucking clue.
Exit quote: “Now most RSA used in production today is 2048 bit or more, so we still haven’t found a way to crack RSA quite yet… but this is one the largest numbers that’s ever been successfully factored.”