The 768-bit RSA algorithm has been factored. The team's paper states in part,

If we are optimistic, it may be possible to factor a 1024-bit RSA modulus within the next decade by means of an academic effort on the same limited scale as the effort presented here. From a practical security point of view this is not a big deal, given that standards recommend phasing out such moduli by the end of the year 2010.

In an unusual footnote (literally), the cryptographers included dialog from Quentin Tarantino film Inglourious Basterds among their reference sources.

This present accomplishment represents a cryptography milestone but not a practical threat to VeriSign's roots or systems. We're confident that our present root...

An interesting paper recently came out in which the researchers measured the rate of removal of SSL Certificates with bad Debian keys from the Web. You may recall that in 2008 a security researcher discovered that Debian's random number generator was not in the slightest bit random and that as a result any key pair generated on the flawed operating system was not trustworthy.

VeriSign responded by modifying our systems to disallow any such comprimised CSR, searching our customer base for such keys, and informing all affected online businesses of the bad certificate so that they could replace it. We eliminated our replacement fee for affected certificates and proactively worked with their owners to remove those certificates...

I'm pleased to point your attention to our newly revised Web site for Thawte. We put a lot of study into the information Thawte customers needed and how they wanted to move through a site. We've confident that this new site will offer a greatly upgraded experience to Thawte customers.

Mobile devices continue to grow in importance as a platform for doing real business online. You may recall that the iPhone broke the EV glass as the first popular mobile device to specifically call out EV SSL Certificates in the interface. This recent article explains how German bank Postbank is using EV on its iPhone specific site. A Postbank official says,

With the launch of the VeriSign EV SSL Certificates for iBanking on the iPhone, we're taking a huge step forward in our efforts to build trust and reassurance for this fast-growing segment of our customer base.