RSA is currently doing an internal review of all of its products to see where the algorithm gets invoked and to change those. A company spokesman said the review is expected to be completed next ...

The algorithm allows a message sender to generate a public keys to encrypt the message and the receiver is sent a generated private key using a secured database.

Despite RSA's gesture, several competitors who have paid royalties for use of the algorithm for up to 17 years, argue that the industry could have done with the patent relaxation earlier.

The RSA algorithm works because, when n is sufficiently large, deriving d from a known e and n will be an impractically long calculation — unless we know p, in which case we can use the shortcut.

The previous RSA record was set in 2010, with a key of 232 decimal digits and 768 bits. “We were actually faster than the previous record, even though we computed something larger,” says Thomé.

And if the latter were able to break RSA, it would’ve already done so.” He concludes: “All told, this is one of the most actively misleading quantum computing papers I’ve seen in 25 years.” ...