Definition:RSA 129/Historical Note

Historical Note RSA $129$

RSA $129$ is one of a number of large ($100$ digits and over) semiprimes offered up as a factorisation challenge by Ronald Linn Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Max Adleman as a demonstration of the effectiveness of their encryption algorithm now known as RSA.

In $1993$, a concerted effort was made by over $600$ academics and hobbyists, moderated over the Internet, to crack the code and so decipher the message which was hidden thereby.

It took less than a year to reveal the secret message:

The magic words are squeamish and ossifrage.

Sources

• 1997: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): $114,381,625,757,888,867,669,235,779,976,146,612,010,218,296,721,242,362,562,561,842,935,706,935,245,733,897,830,597,123,563,958,705,058,989,075,147,599,290,026,879,543,541$