How hard is factoring?

RSA hides its secret inside the product of two very large primes. Multiplying them to get that number is instant; factoring it back into primes is so slow that, at today's key sizes, the fastest machines on earth would run out of time before the universe did. That asymmetry is RSA's security.

Figure
512 bits

Drag the slider — watch the gap widen from toy widths to modern RSA keys.

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Factor
1 ns 1 µs 1 s 1 hour 1 year 1 Gyr

Part of The Quantum Reckoning in Ex Machina. Other explorables.