After 41 years, Bob and Alice are still going strong

After 41 years, Bob and Alice are still going strong

Something happened 41 years ago that changed the world. In April 1978, something wonderful happened … Rivest, Shamir and Aldeman published a paper on digital signatures, and changed the world of cybersecurity forever. In the paper they outlined how the RSA method could be used to sign a document [here]:

At the same time they also introduced Bob and Alice to the world as A and B:

An interesting part of the paper is that it would take 3,800,000,000 years to factorize 200 digit numbers for their factors:

But time moves on, and these timing are well short of which is now possible. For example, in the paper they outline that 100 digits would take 74 years to crack, so here is my little on-line factorizer (cracker) for 106 digits [here] (I have limited its operation, so they larger values cannot be cracked):

54654552312098756432317474354389675454654552312098756432387564323875643
23564323875643235465455231209875643

and which cracks in about a second:

5,465,455,231,209,875,643,231,747,435,438,967,545,465,455,231,209,875,
643,238,756,432,387,564,323,564,323,875,643,235,465,455,231,209,875,643 
= 11 x 211 x 233 x 20,986,104,577 x 481,574,460,835,072,036,479,035,395,
017,196,481,598,187,271,356,606,562,178,805,697,061,485,624,897,016,297,
245,105,363

So, along with Bob and Alice, we have also been introduced to a whole range of characters:

Happy Birthday to Bob and Alice on their 41th birthday!

If you are interested, here is an overview of the RSA method:

As with Bob and Alice, it is still going strong, but perhaps it is not aging as well as they are!