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I'm thinking more about my idea to stream a "speedrun" of 512 bit RSA factorization. Sub 2 hour appears possible. It'd help force cryptographic libraries to deprecate it.

I still have tens of thousands of pounds of legal costs to cover, so I want to make it a fundraiser.

The movie Sneakers, which involves a cryptography-cracking Macguffin (strongly implied to break RSA - Len Adleman, the "A" in RSA was a consultant for the film).

In the film, one of the characters remarks “There isn’t a government on this planet that wouldn’t kill us all for that thing”, and indeed several characters are killed over the Macguffin.

Too many secrets.

Back then, 512 bit was a common key size for RSA. Now, it will fall to a single cheap PC with publicly available software in a couple weeks. I recently did some experimenting, and believe I can do it in two hours. Coincidentally, in Sneakers, the credits roll at about 2h01m31s and the film ends at 2h05m24s.

Naturally, this seems like a time to beat.

I've converted the entire movie to run inside terminal in full color unicode art with subtitles (I've posted screenshots recently - it's very watchable).

I was thinking I'd take pledges for certain time goals (before the NSA shows up, under 2 hours, beat the film, under 2½ hours, under 3 hours, under 3½ hours). The current best time that I'm aware of is "under four hours", so this will be a world record.

Anyone willing to help make this happen?