Programming languages like Python use the multiplication instruction provided by your computer's CPU.
In addition, you have to remember that Python is a very high-level programming language, which runs on a virtual machine which itself runs on your computer. As such, it is, inherently, a few order of magnitudes slower than native code. Translating your algorithm to assembly (or even to C) would result in a massive speedup -- although it'd still be slower than the CPU's multiplication operation.
On the plus side, unlike naive assembly/C, Python auto-promotes integers to bignums instead of overflowing when your numbers are bigger than 2**32.
