Designer Primes

Anna M.  Johnston

Paper 2020/1535

Designer Primes

Anna M. Johnston

Abstract

Prime integers are the backbone of most public key cryptosystems. Attacks often go after the primes themselves, as in the case of all factoring and index calculus algorithms. Primes are time sensitive cryptographic material and should be periodically changed. Unfortunately many systems use fixed primes for a variety of reasons, including the difficulty of generating trusted, random, cryptographically secure primes. This is particularly concerning in the case of discrete log based cryptosystems. This paper describes a variant of provable prime generation, intended for discrete logarithm based cryptography, based off Pocklington's theorem with improved efficiency, flexibility and security.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Secret-key cryptography
Publication info: Preprint. MINOR revision.
Keywords: prime generation finite field cryptosystems
Contact author(s): amj @ juniper net
History: 2020-12-13: received
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2020/1535
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2020/1535,
      author = {Anna M.  Johnston},
      title = {Designer Primes},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2020/1535},
      year = {2020},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/1535}
}