The author factored RSA keys from a 1990s Certificate Authority by extracting old root certificates from archived browser installers on archive.org. Using modern computing power, small RSA keys from the early Web PKI era—when no minimum standards existed—can be factored on a modest desktop computer.
Background
The RSA factoring challenge demonstrated that key sizes could be broken as computing power grew. The 862-bit RSA-260 was recently factored, and this article explores the historical consequence for early Web PKI certificates that used even smaller keys.
- Source
- Lobsters
- Published
- Sep 8, 2026 at 12:05 PM
- Score
- 7.0 / 10