Two 1990s CA root keys factored on a home desktop

Two root certificate authorities that Netscape shipped in the 1990s had their 512-bit RSA keys factored on a single desktop computer, per the CADO-NFS factoring writeup posted September 7. The target was E-Certify RSA 512 Gold's SSL server and client roots, cracked on a single Ryzen 9 5950X. The server key fell in 32 hours, the client key in 29. A colleague went further, factoring the VeriSign Test Commercial Software Publisher CA key in about an hour on a GPU cluster.

None of this breaks anything live. Browsers dropped both roots in 2002, and the certificate authorities behind them are gone. What the result confirms is how weak the early Web PKI's rules were. There was no enforced minimum key size, and any archived trust store still carrying these roots is forgeable on a gaming PC over a weekend.

That matters wherever these roots are still trusted outside a current browser, in an old certificate bundle nobody has updated. A certificate forged against E-Certify RSA 512 Gold or the VeriSign test root would still validate anywhere that bundle is in use.

The writeup doesn't say how many systems still carry these specific roots, and there's no registry that would answer that question either. The E-Certify keys fell to one chip working alone; the VeriSign key needed a cluster. 512-bit RSA no longer needs a lab, just a day and a half of patience on a single computer.