Talk
Primality Testing in the Wild
Talk by Prof. Dr. Kenneth G. Paterson
Date: 09.10.19 Time: 15.00 - 16.00 Room: Y27H28
Primality testing is a basic operation in cryptographic software, essential to the security of cryptographic primitives and protocols in many different scenarios. In this talk, I’ll report on our recent work analysing how primality testing is implemented in widely-used crypto libraries. I will distinguish between testing random numbers that are generated locally and testing of parameters supplied by potentially adversarial parties. Surprisingly, given the simplicity and basic nature of the problem, I will show that the majority libraries get it wrong with their default settings for the adversarial setting. I will discuss what this reveals about the disjunction between cryptographic theory and software development practice, focussing on the need for a better transfer of knowledge and for the use of robust APIs in cryptographic software.