AI agents cut the cost of a 1024-bit RSA forgery 3.5 times. In under four days.

SecurityWeek reported on 9 November 2026 that two Google DeepMind AI agents, working with UC San Diego and Inria cryptographers, re-ran an earlier forgery attack on a 1024-bit RSA key. It took 391 CPU core-years instead of 1,380, and the agents built it in under four days. The key was not factored, and the attack needs about 4 billion signing queries.

1024-bit RSA is the old key still hiding in a signing service nobody has touched in years. The attack does not work on devices that hash internally. But the cost of breaking old crypto is now falling at machine speed.

Search your certificates, keys and HSM signing paths for 1024-bit RSA today and move them to 2048-bit or larger. Then check whether your HSM hashes internally.