The RSA algorithm has become an encryption standard for many e-commerce security applications. The patent for it was issued to MIT on Sept. 20, 1983, and licensed exclusively to RSA Security.

A recent research paper makes the claim that the RSA cryptographic algorithm can be broken with a quantum algorithm. Skeptics warn: don’t believe everything you read.

This paper presents a design of data encryption and decryption in a network environment using RSA algorithm with a specific message block size.

The RSA algorithm has become an encryption standard for many e-commerce security applications. The patent for it was issued to MIT on Sept. 20, 1983, and licensed exclusively to RSA Security.

The RSA algorithm is the most popular and best understood public key cryptography system. Its security relies on the fact that factoring is slow and multiplication is fast.

Symmetric cryptography, which encrypts the bulk of our data today (and does not include the RSA algorithm), can easily be strengthened to protect against quantum computers.

Breaching the RSA-2048 algorithm requires, similar to other algorithms in the RSA numbers family, finding the prime factors of a number with 617 decimal digits and 2048 binary digits.

A quantum computer with a million qubits would be able to crack the vital RSA encryption algorithm, and while such machines don't yet exist, that estimate could still fall further ...