Independent factorization of large numbers

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by orever

And he didn't even need to prove it was a vulnerability.

There is no "vulnerability" as in the sense of a backdoor or math trick or something. It is just that the computers became so fast that they are able to factor a 512 bits number (about 154 digits) in a reasonable amount of time, with the current state-of-the-art software tools. And when I say "reasonable" I am thinking hours, or days. I can do it at home with the hardware I currently have and yafu, in (much) less than a week, and I do not have very advanced computers. And I save the ~$100 required by the EC2 cluster in the script you linked.
The fun part is that many of the guys here on this forum can do it faster, even if they work individually, i.e. not putting their resources in common.