3 ms·

I found the original page hard to read. Reading the abstract of the paper cleared all the confusion.

• Animats 10y ago
  Right. The paper is much better than the PR. It's not clear there's a real security problem here in being able to identify the prime generator for RSA keys. Unless that generator is weaker than it should be. They did find at least two key generators which look suspicious. One generator never generates certain byte combinations, which indicates a possible serious weakness in the random number generation. Weak RSA key generators have been found in the past. Big flap back in 2012.[1] Some keys were found which were products of two large primes where two keys shared the one factor. This is hugely unlikely statistically; the generator had to be defective. This isn't that bad. The real worry, of course, is a designed-in weakness in the random number generator, one that's not detectable by the usual statistical tests. [1] http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/02/crypto-shocker-four-of-every-1000-public-keys-provide-no-security/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/02/crypto-shocker-four-...