From root@newsbf02.news.aol.com Fri Aug 16 14:48:48 1996 Received: from MIT.EDU (SOUTH-STATION-ANNEX.MIT.EDU [18.72.1.2]) by bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU (8.6.13/2.3JIK) with SMTP id OAA12454; Fri, 16 Aug 1996 14:48:46 -0400 Received: from [192.48.96.16] by MIT.EDU with SMTP id AA02072; Fri, 16 Aug 96 14:47:41 EDT Received: from ngeout01.news.aol.com by relay6.UU.NET with SMTP (peer crosschecked as: ngeout01.news.aol.com [152.163.176.244]) id QQbdax19144; Fri, 16 Aug 1996 14:47:36 -0400 (EDT) Received: from newsbf02.news.aol.com (newsbf02.mail.aol.com [152.163.172.50]) by ngeout01.news.aol.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id OAA03714 for ; Fri, 16 Aug 1996 14:51:06 -0400 Received: by newsbf02.news.aol.com (1.38.193.5/16.2) id AA15631; Fri, 16 Aug 1996 14:47:30 -0400 Posted-Date: 16 Aug 1996 14:47:19 -0400 Received-Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 14:47:30 -0400 To: news-answers@uunet.uu.net Path: newsbf02.news.aol.com!not-for-mail From: rsamaven@aol.com (RSAMaven) Newsgroups: news.answers Subject: RSA Laboratories FAQ 3.0 - Part 3 Date: 16 Aug 1996 14:47:19 -0400 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Lines: 524 Sender: root@newsbf02.news.aol.com Message-Id: <4v2fnn$f82@newsbf02.news.aol.com> Reply-To: rsamaven@aol.com (RSAMaven) Question 11. Are Strong Primes Necessary in RSA? In the literature pertaining to RSA, it has often been suggested that in choosing a key pair, one should use so-called strong primes p and q to generate the modulus n. Strong primes are those with certain properties that make the product n hard to factor by specific factoring methods; such properties have included, for example, the existence of a large prime factor of p-1 and a large prime factor of p+1. The reason for these concerns is that some factoring methods are especially suited to primes p such that p-1 or p+1 has only small factors; strong primes are resistant to these attacks. However, advances in factoring over the last ten years (see Question 48) appear to have obviated the advantage of strong primes; the elliptic curve factoring algorithm is one such advance. The new factoring methods have as good a chance of success on strong primes as on weak primes. Therefore, choosing traditional strong primes alone does not significantly increase [remainder of text deleted by folder-shrink.pl]