Some remarks concerning the M.I.T. public-key cryptosystem

Let a messageM be encrypted by raisingM to a powere moduloR, whereR ande are integers which are made public. The recipient of this encrypted form ofM can decipher it by raising the cipher text to a powerd moduloR. Only the recipient knows the values of the two large primesp1,p2 such thatR=p1p2; consequently, only he knowsd, ase is preselected such that (e, (p1 − 1)(p2 − 1))=1 anded ≡1 (mod (p1 − 1)(p2 − 1)).Recently several attacks have been made on the proposed security of this cryptosystem under iteration of the encryption procedure. In this paper we discuss methods of selecting the primesp1,p2 and the encryption exponente such that the possibility of breaking this cryptosystem by using an iteration procedure is minimized. Several numerical results are also presented.

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