Transaction

j"1LAnZuoQdcKCkpDBKQMCgziGMoPC4VQUckMë<div class="post">So the way I read it.<br/><br/>Given two numbers p and q. Which for RSA are supposed to be large primes.<br/><br/>Then n = p*q<br/><br/>The public key is the two fields (n, e).&nbsp; e is called the public exponent and appears to be chosen from a set of common values.<br/>The private key is also two fields (n, d). d is called the private exponent it it is derived by knowing&nbsp; e, p-1, and q-1.<br/><br/>The trick is, it is really hard to factor n into p &amp; q. Therefore it is equally as hard to find p-1 and q-1<br/><br/><br/>My postulation is that if n is arbitrary, and e is one of the common values, then there are lots of different p, q pairs that would work. The less prime the numbers the easier to find p and q, and therefore p-1 and q-1. And if you have a big block of arbitrary data that give you lots of flexibility in trying to collide a hash.<br/><br/>(That is the point where I could be totally off base though. Really interested, if a crypto geek knows better than me.)<br/><br/>I did read that the key generation algorithms create p and q such that they are "very likely prime" but it is too much work to know for sure. This leads me to believe non-primes don't cause any obvious FAILs. I could be wrong though.</div> text/html