The World's Worst Factoring Algorithm is an open-source project that celebrates those who have, and those who continue to attempt the impossible.
Integer factorization is one of the great unsolved problems in mathematics — deceptively simple to state, yet famously difficult to solve efficiently. Its complexity has long fascinated mathematicians and computer scientists, and it once stood at the center of the RSA Factoring Challenge — a decades-long, international effort to test the limits of factoring algorithms. Despite powerful tools like the General Number Field Sieve, progress has slowed, and many of the larger challenge numbers remain unbroken. So why bother? Because progress doesn’t always come from refinement — sometimes it comes from reimagining the problem entirely.