1024-bit RSA encryption cracked by carefully starving CPU of electricity

Several researchers the University of Michigan have succeeded in cracking  the RSA security technology which protects all ecommerce and online banking transactions.

The university scientists found that they could deduce tiny pieces of a private key by injecting slight fluctuations in a device’s power supply as it was processing encrypted messages. In a little more than 100 hours, they fed the device enough “transient faults” that they were able to assemble the entirety of its 1024-bit key.

“The RSA algorithm gives security under the assumption that as long as the private key is private, you can’t break in unless you guess it. We’ve shown that that’s not true,” said Valeria Bertacco, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Read the full statement here.