Researchers describe RSA signature forgery method that reduces computing demands

Researchers have devised a way to forge RSA digital signatures without first factoring the number underlying a private key, Ars Technica reported. The method substantially reduces the computing resources thought necessary to attack RSA keys, bringing an attack on deprecated 1024-bit keys closer to practical reach. The finding remains subject to peer review. It poses little immediate practical threat: attacking even 1024-bit keys would still require exceptional resources, and widely used RSA implementations are safe, the report said. Its significance lies in challenging the assumption that producing a valid RSA signature requires recovering the private key first.