From: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 95 16:43:55 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: subjective names and MITM
Message-ID: <ac9b0caf2d0210048576@[205.199.118.202]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 10:36 PM 10/6/95, Scott Brickner wrote:

>I'm not an expert here, but I understand the "well-known methods" to
>essentially use some formula that "tends" to generate prime numbers from
>uniformly distributed numbers, feed it a "good" random number, and then
>check to see if it's really prime.  If it's not, pick another "good"
>random number and try again.  The entropy in the prime is the same
>as in the random number generator.

The commonly used method is to generate a random number, then interate up
(or down, it doesn't matter), testing each number in turn for primality.
One doesn't have to test too many numbers to find a prime, as I explained
in my last post.

It is indeed true that the entropy or randomness lies in the selection of
the random number that one starts searching from.


--Tim May


Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
Corralitos, CA              | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^756839      | black markets, collapse of governments.
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