From: Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>
Date: Wed, 9 Aug 95 08:36:35 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Prime Number Gen's.
Message-ID: <199508091535.IAA28827@jobe.shell.portal.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


There are algorithms for producing provable primes which don't take
too long.  However they do not work to prove a given probable prime
is actually prime, rather they generate a prime.  One was described
by Mihailescu Preda, <zhmhd@zh014.ubs.ubs.ch>, on sci.crypt on
December 13, 1993.  It is not clear whether this kind of algorithm is
suitable for RSA (where the primes must be kept secret) since it could
reduce the space of primes which are produced.

Hal