[dragontamer]

In essence, RSA is a crypto-algorithm that relies on the fact that "Factorization" is a very very hard mathematical problem for standard computers to solve.

For example, what are the factors of 143?? Answer: 13 x 11. Factoring is hardest when the number is made up of two prime numbers. Public Key cryptography is basically a giant puzzle based on the difficulty of factoring numbers.

Now, instead of small numbers that we humans use, what is typically done is two 2000+ bit prime numbers are chosen and then the resulting 4000+ bit number is used as the "encryption puzzle".

This 4096 bit number happened to be 231, which is 3 x 77. Huzzzahh! I guess 231 is a 4096-bit number... but generally speaking, you'd hope that the number at the center of your "encryption puzzle" would be a bit... larger. So that it'd be harder to factor it.