The $200,000 cryptographic challenge

NEWS Security vendor RSA Security is offering up to $200,000 to anyone who can crack its 2048bit public key encryption. To win the money cryptographers will have to constantly factor different numbers together to decode the key. If successful they will be able to determine the two prime numbers used to generate a 'challenge' number set by RSA. In order to break code, cryptographers generally have to use a 'brute force attack', which involves using an immense amount of computer time to derive all the possible permutations. RSA is confident that the money will not be won easily, as its challenge is an infinitely more complex task: In fact the challenge is said to be 'virtually impossible' to perform with the computational power of today's machines. Tim Pickard, strategic marketing director of EMEA at RSA, said it was a serious amount of money, for an incredibly difficult challenge that the company hopes will encourage research into the current body of security knowledge. Pickard said: "The more the keys are tested, the more secure they will become. We are putting them into the public domain like this because if it stands the test of time it is obvious they are very secure."