A Multithreaded Bound Varying Chaotic Firefly Algorithm for prime factorization

Factorization of a number composed of two large prime numbers of almost equal number of digits is computationally a difficult task. The RSA public-key cryptosystem relies on this difficulty of factoring out the product of two very large prime numbers. There are various ways to find these two prime factors, but the huge memory and runtime expenses for large numbers pose tremendous difficulty. In this paper, we explore the possibility of solving this problem with the aid of Swarm Intelligence Metaheuristics using a Multithreaded Bound Varying Chaotic Firefly Algorithm. Firefly algorithm is one of the recent evolutionary computing models inspired by the behavior of fireflies. We have considered factors of equal number of digits. Observations show that the Firefly algorithm can be an effective tool to factorize a semi prime and hence can be further extended on extremely large numbers.