From: math <math@psido.exp.univie.ac.at>
Newsgroups: sci.math
Subject: URGENT !!! please help ...
Date: Mon, 07 Oct 1996 22:23:46 +0000

In the recent years there have been letter-bombs (not e-mails !)
sent to different recipents in austria and germany.
The sender has threatened to send more bombs in the next few days and
sent a letter to an Austrian newspaper containing some 15 coded pages.
We know that one of the keys to this coded message is contained in one
of the two primefactors of the number :

63054821507012954715671833249588963223443414541197127588837698760326025252
78792613527673894410568910003629553586814142438653640364957870769912819491
43213863190059077472921499001536910276096488477634484971781148430952895040
117952098061886881

This number has already been given officially to the
NSA-mathematicians by the Austrian authorities (some 6-7 days ago) but
still no factorization has been found.

You could be saving human lives ...

e-mail : math@psido.exp.univie.ac.at
==============================================================================

From: rusin@vesuvius.math.niu.edu (Dave Rusin)
Newsgroups: sci.math
Subject: Re: URGENT !!! please help ...
Date: 14 Oct 1996 06:55:45 GMT

In article <325982F2.2583@psido.exp.univie.ac.at>,
math  <math@psido.exp.univie.ac.at> wrote:
>We know that one of the keys to this coded message is contained in one
>of the two primefactors of the number :
>
>63054821507012954715671833249588963223443414541197127588837698760326025252
>78792613527673894410568910003629553586814142438653640364957870769912819491
>43213863190059077472921499001536910276096488477634484971781148430952895040
>117952098061886881

Montgomery factorization program.  Compiled Tue Mar 20 11:16:43 PST 1990.
[blah blah]
The first number below is the product of the second and the third, as found
by ECM             after ******** multiplies and GCDs
in  487023.28 CP seconds at Sun Oct 13 18:09:03 1996

6305482150701295471567183324958896322344341454119712758883769876032602525278$
7926135276738944105689100036295535868141424386536403649578707699128194914321$
3863190059077472921499001536910276096488477634484971781148430952895040117952$
098061886881

899780191389918841817

7007802806773305723362178479469391086436569894428962915470383694468271355139$
3605386425509144744798944760122330024434561680819925995333846299459120476432$
4431646638687386736834501655924319229655166351460217551173665878793

Probable prime cofactor has    219 digits -- terminating.

>You could be saving human lives ...
Yeah, sure.

dave