Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Man cryptography and cryptology are as old as the hills but the new math is making security more and more difficult to achieve. A new hardware device theoretically devised by Dr. Shamir of RSAand aptly named TWINKLE will purportedely by capable of devouring 512bit and greater keys at alarming speeds, and all for an estimated cost of about $5K USD. The device is 'an electro-optical sieving device which will execute sieve-based factoring algorithms approximately two to three orders of magnitude as fast as a conventional fast PC'. The math is daunting and the speed is amazing, but this theory is real.Having the company and man who designed a lot of the current hash and cipher methods also leading the pack to dismantle them is actually reassurring. Public key cryptography can only succeed if the limitations are fully known and fully open. As RSA bangs on much of its own business it also gains further knowledge and understanding. This is an obvious catch 22, but in my opinion the benefits of open and realized public cryptographic standards far outweigh the disadvantages of math machines. If somebody can crack the code for a few bucks, I wanna know and I want a new code. Of course, not withstanding disclaimer RSA claims:Conclusion: The idea presented by Dr. Shamir is a nice theoretical advance, but until it can be implemented and the matrix difficulties resolved it will not be a threat to even 768-bit RSA keys, let alone 1024.