&quot;NIST says a 2048 bit RSA key has a strength of 112 bits: i.e., there are theoretically 2^112 possibilities to brute force the private key.&quot;<p>This is incorrect. The number of 2048-bit RSA keys is much more than 2^112, bruteforcing is out of question. 2^112 is an approximate number of operations to compute the private key using techniques more efficient than brute force (e.g. number field sieve described later in the article).