Carmichael Numbers and Primality Tests

By

Sanjeev Rao

Outline

Introduction Carmichael numbers

What is Carmichael number Detecting a Carmichael number Statistics and importance Sieve of Eratosthenes Chinese Primality Test

Ancient Primality testing methods

Introduction

Cryptographic algorithms uses big prime numbers Checking a big number is prime is not so easy

Solution

Use probabilistic primality tests Fermat Little Theorem:

If n is prime then ap-1 1 (mod p) for any integer a and pa.

Carmichael Numbers

Pseudoprime for every possible base b: that is, for every b coprime to n Passes Fermats little theorem test

Statistics

16 #s up to 100,000 43 #s up to 106 105,212 up to 1015 and 246,683 up to 1016 Example 561, 1105, 1729, 2465 .

Detecting Carmichael numbers

If n is a product of distinct prime numbers, n = p1, p2, p3 . Ps , pi pj and pi 1 | n-1 for every prime factor pi, i = 1.. s, then n is a Carmichael number. Example: n = 561 = 3 x 11 x 17 2 | 560 , 10 | 560, 16 | 560

Importance

Encryption algorithms like RSA, ElGamal etc must have large primes For example, If we pick a Carmichael number as a prime number p in RSA, we can factor p and hence q and k ( k = (p-1) x (q-1) )

Primality testing

Process of proving a number is prime Two of the oldest test methods

Sieve of Eratosthenes Chinese Primality Test

Sieve of Eratosthenes

Greek mathematician Found this method in 240 BC One of the most efficient way to find all of the small primes (say all those less than 10,000,000) Sieve all primes less than given n

Sieve of Eratosthenes

contd

Write down the numbers 1, 2, 3, ..., n. We will eliminate composites by marking them. Initially all numbers are unmarked Mark the number 1 as special (it is neither prime nor composite)

Sieve of Eratosthenes

contd

Set k=1. Until k exceeds or equals the square root of n do this: Find the first number in the list greater than k that has not been identified as composite. (The very first number is 2.) Call it m. Mark the numbers 2m, 3m, 4m, ... as composite. (Thus in the first run we mark all even numbers greater than 2. In the second run we mark all multiples of 3 greater than 3.) m is a prime number. Put it on your list Set k=m and repeat Put the remaining unmarked numbers in the sequence on your list of prime numbers

Example primes less than or equal to 30

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 The first number 2 is prime, cross out its multiples (color them red), so the red numbers are not prime. 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Example

contd

Repeat this with the next number 3 and so on Finally we have

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

We are left with {2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29} as primes less than 30

contd

speed O(n(log n)log log n) bit operations space O(n)

Disadvantages

Not efficient for big numbers Needs lot of space to store big numbers

Possible solution

Large n use a segmented sieve

http://www.ieeta.pt/~tos/software/prime_sieve.html
Gives the algorithm and the runtime in seconds on a 900MHz Athlon processor with 512Mbytes of memory running on GNU/Linux A1, A2, A3 three different segmented sieve algorithms

Performance
n 12 14 16 18 A1 13.31 25.79 97.39 208.13 A2 14.08 20.62 26.26 32.36 A3 2.63 4.05 5.58 9.61

Chinese Primality Test

Found in approximately 500 B.C Let n be an integer, n > 1. If 2n is congruent to 2 (mod n) or 2n-1 1 (mod n) , then n is either a prime or a base-2 pseudoprime. A number that passes the Chinese Primality Test has only a 0.002% chance of not being prime.

Contd

In 1640, Fermat rediscovered what the ancient Chinese had known nearly 2000 years before him. He also examined the problem using bases other than 2, improving on the accuracy of the Chinese test.

References

Definitions Sieve of Eratosthenes

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CarmichaelNumber.html

http://primes.utm.edu/glossary/page.php?sort=SieveOfEratosthenes http://ccins.camosun.bc.ca/~jbritton/jberatosthenes.htm http://www.math.pku.edu.cn/stu/eresource/wsxy/sxrjjc/wk/Encyclopedia/math/e/e232.htm

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/pscico/doc/nesl/manual/node10.html

Segmented Sieve

http://www.ieeta.pt/~tos/software/prime_sieve.html

References

contd

Chinese Primality testing http://www-math.mit.edu/phase2/UJM/vol1/DORSEY-F.PDF List of Carmichael Numbers http://www.kobepharma-u.ac.jp/~math/note/note02.txt

Questions

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