My professor has given me an RSA factoring problem has assignment. The given modulus is 30 decimal digits long. I have been searching a lot about factoring algorithms. But it has been quite a headache to choose one for my given requirements. Which all algorithms give better performance for 30 decimal digit numbers?
Note: So far I have read about Brute force approach and Quadratic Sieve. The latter is complex and the former time consuming.
There's another method called Pollard's Rho algorithm, which is not as fast as the GNFS but is capable of factoring 30-digit numbers in minutes rather than hours.
The algorithm is very simple. It stops when it finds any factor, so you'll need to call it recursively to obtain a complete factorisation. Here's a basic implementation in Python:
def rho(n):
def gcd(a, b):
while b > 0:
a, b = b, a%b
return a
g = lambda z: (z**2 + 1) % n
x, y, d = 2, 2, 1
while d == 1:
x = g(x)
y = g(g(y))
d = gcd(abs(x-y), n)
if d == 0:
print("Can't factor this, sorry.")
print("Try a different polynomial for g(), maybe?")
else:
print("%d = %d * %d" % (n, d, n // d))
rho(441693463910910230162813378557) # = 763728550191017 * 578338290221621
Or you could just use an existing software library. I can't see much point in reinventing this particular wheel.