Summary

Much of our online security relies on a digital padlock system called RSA encryption, which protects our privacy as we doomscroll social media, get software updates, or do banking transactions to fund further doomscrolling. The RSA-2048 encryption standard is easy to form but incredibly hard to break because it multiplies two large prime numbers to produce a modulus up to 617 decimal digits long – a virtual padlock that people can see and prod.

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