A method for obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems
Communications of the ACM - Special 25th Anniversary Issue
ACM SIGSAM Bulletin
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The RSA method is used for the interchange of secret messages via insecure channels. It is elegant in theory and fast and reliable in practice. Applications are in the field of communication networks.The method is initialized by choosing some suitable large prime numbers. Encrypting and decrypting of a message are done by modular arithmetic. The modulus is a large integer (e.g. 200 decimal digits). Any attempt to break the system amounts to factoring the modulus.The basic operations that are needed for an implementation are fundamental for any computer algebra package, e.g. SAC-2 offers them in an suitable way. This project therefore requires only little programming, but some insight into theory and the ability to find and put together existing components. An optional part of the project deals with the security of the method.