GoKawiilResearcher factors 512-bit RSA keys from 1990s Netscape root certificate authority
A security researcher extracted decades-old root certificates bundled with early Netscape and Internet Explorer browser installers from archive.org, using an LLM to catalog them. Among the finds was a 512-bit RSA certificate authority key shipped in Netscape 4.51 in 1999, trusted for both SSL and S/MIME, which the researcher then successfully factored using modern computing power.