We just recieved our last cryptography assignment for the term, and lo and behold the first question wants us to factor a 512 bit RSA modulus. This is generally considered quite hard. Fortunately for us, we were told that the two primes were consecutive (no other primes between them) and so factoring is made a bit easier. And by a bit I mean a lot. Less than a second in Maple.

So, my new favourite number is the RSA modulus we were given and which I present to you here. In case you are wondering it is 155 digits long which is equivalent to 512 bits. The number is:

13407807929942597099574024998205847189283435579012041349483201012750935011022883316571881173443541492379311162245228741838039068780672466659642406067092389

And since I was successful I can also tell you that the two prime factors of this number are:

115792089237316195423570985008687912438229444125126512994416529902772624499593
115792089237316195423570985008687912438229444125126512994416529902772624499773

They are really close together and both really close to the square root of their product which makes them easy to find.

I think I will call the number "Matthew's number" and its factors will be known as the disciples of Matthew's number.