Breaking RSA Generically is Equivalent to Factoring, with Preprocessing

Published: 2022, Last Modified: 26 Jan 2026IACR Cryptol. ePrint Arch. 2022EveryoneRevisionsBibTeXCC BY-SA 4.0
Abstract: We investigate the relationship between the classical RSA and factoring problems when preprocessing is considered. In such a model, adversaries can use an unbounded amount of precomputation to produce an “advice” string to then use during the online phase, when a problem instance becomes known. Previous work (e.g., [Bernstein, Lange ASI- ACRYPT ’13]) has shown that preprocessing attacks significantly im- prove the runtime of the best-known factoring algorithms. Due to these improvements, we ask whether the relationship between factoring and RSA fundamentally changes when preprocessing is allowed. Specifically, we investigate whether there is a superpolynomial gap between the run- time of the best attack on RSA with preprocessing and on factoring with preprocessing. Our main result rules this out with respect to algorithms in a careful adaptation of the generic ring model [Aggarwal and Maurer, Eurocrypt 2009] to the preprocessing setting. In particular, in this setting we show the existence of a factoring algorithm with polynomially related parameters, for any setting of RSA parameters.
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