Blog post discusses factoring of RSA‑260

A collaborative research team announced on Monday that it has successfully factored the RSA‑260 challenge number, a 260‑digit (862‑bit) semiprime that has remained unfactored since its release in 2005 as part of the RSA Factoring Challenge. The breakthrough, detailed in a blog post on Cognition.com, marks the first time a number of this size has been broken using the General Number Field Sieve (GNFS) algorithm, confirming the growing computational power available for large‑scale integer factorization.

The effort combined more than 2,000 core‑years of processing on a distributed network of high‑performance computers, with the final sieving stage completed in early September after several months of coordinated work. Researchers reported that the factorization required approximately 1.5 petabytes of intermediate data and cost several million dollars in cloud and hardware resources. While the success demonstrates the feasibility of attacking RSA keys larger than 800 bits, experts note that current best‑practice recommendations still advise the use of 2048‑bit or larger keys for long‑term security. The result has been discussed on platforms such as Hacker News, where the announcement has garnered 53 points and six comments, highlighting both the technical achievement and its implications for cryptographic standards.