At 02:08 PM 05/24/2000 +0100, Ben Laurie wrote:
>John Gilmore wrote:
>> Anybody tested the primes in major products lately?
>Interesting point ... of course, these days one can produce checkable
>certificates of primality - but I'm not aware of any free software to do
>it ... is there any?
There's primality testing software in PGP's key generation routines,
and also in the GIMPS Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search software.
It's not designed for an independent input of test material,
but that's not a tough thing to add wrappers for.
I think somebody also did an N-Lines-Of-Perl version.
GIMPS uses Lucas-Lehmer tests; I forget if PGP uses that or Miller-Rabin.
It's a probablistic primality testing system, and if you wanted to do a
widespread-use backdoor-checker, it might make sense to use some
test primes in the usual sequence and some chosen at random.
IIRC, Technically, it won't catch use of Carmichael numbers, but
there aren't a lot of those.
More seriously, there's David Jablon's point that it won't catch
use of real primes from a small search space or other RNG tricks.
>Is it time for the Campaign for Real Primes[1]?
>[1] Apologies if this quip dies in translation! :-)
The Campaign for Real Ale was a Good Thing...
Thanks!
Bill
Bill Stewart, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
