Chapter 8 – Introduction to Number

Theory
18AIC307T & Cryptography
and Network Security The Devil said to Daniel Webster: "Set me a task I can't carry out, and
I'll give you anything in the world you ask for."
Daniel Webster: "Fair enough. Prove that for n greater than 2, the
equation an + bn = cn has no non-trivial solution in the integers."
They agreed on a three-day period for the labor, and the Devil
UNIT 3 : Number Theory & Asymmetric disappeared.
At the end of three days, the Devil presented himself, haggard, jumpy,
Key Cryptography biting his lip. Daniel Webster said to him, "Well, how did you do at
my task? Did you prove the theorem?'
"Eh? No . . . no, I haven't proved it."
Faculty : Ms. NITHYASRI A, "Then I can have whatever I ask for? Money? The Presidency?'
"What? Oh, that—of course. But listen! If we could just prove the
Assistant Professor following two lemmas—"
—The Mathematical Magpie, Clifton Fadiman

Department of Artificial Intelligence

MKCE

Outline Prime Numbers

• will consider: • prime numbers only have divisors of 1 and self
– prime numbers – they cannot be written as a product of other numbers
– note: 1 is prime, but is generally not of interest
– Fermat’s and Euler’s Theorems & ø(n)
– Primality Testing • eg. 2,3,5,7 are prime, 4,6,8,9,10 are not
– Chinese Remainder Theorem • prime numbers are central to number theory
• list of prime number less than 200 is:
– Primitive Roots & Discrete Logarithms 2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29 31 37 41 43 47 53 59
61 67 71 73 79 83 89 97 101 103 107 109 113 127
131 137 139 149 151 157 163 167 173 179 181 191
193 197 199
 Prime Factorisation Relatively Prime Numbers & GCD
• to factor a number n is to write it as a • two numbers a,b are relatively prime
product of other numbers: n = a x b x c (coprime) if they have no common divisors
apart from 1
• note that factoring a number is relatively – eg. 8 and 15 are relatively prime since factors of 8
are 1,2,4,8 and of 15 are 1,3,5,15 and 1 is the
hard compared to multiplying the factors
only common factor
together to generate the number • conversely, can determine the greatest common
• the prime factorisation of a number n is divisor by comparing their prime factorizations
when its written as a product of primes and using least powers
– eg. 300 = 21x31x52 ; 18 = 21x32 hence
– eg. 91 = 7 x 13 ; 3600 = 24 x 32 x 52 GCD(18,300) = 21x31x50 = 6

Fermat's Theorem
• ap-1 = 1 (mod p)
– where p is prime and GCD(a,p) = 1
• also known as Fermat’s Little Theorem
• also have: ap = a (mod p)
• useful in public key crypto and primality
testing
 Euler Totient Function ø(n) Euler Totient Function ø(n)
• when doing arithmetic modulo n • to compute ø(n) need to count number of
• complete set of residues is: 0..n-1 residues to be excluded
• reduced set of residues is those numbers • in general need prime factorization, but
(residues) which are relatively prime to n – for p (p prime) ø(p)=p-1
– eg for n = 10, complete set of residues is – for p.q (p,q prime) ø(p.q)=(p-1)x(q-1)
{0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9}
– reduced set of residues is {1,3,7,9} • eg.
ø(37) = 36
• number of elements in reduced set of residues is
ø(21) = (3–1)x(7–1) = 2x6 = 12
called the Euler Totient Function ø(n)

Euler's Theorem
• a generalisation of Fermat's Theorem
• aø(n) = 1 (mod n)
– for any a,n where GCD(a,n) = 1
• eg.
a = 3 ; n = 10 ; ø(10) = 4;
hence 34 = 81 = 1 mod 10
a = 2 ; n = 11 ; ø(11) = 10;
hence 210 = 1024 = 1 mod 11
• also have: aø(n)+1 = a (mod n)
 Primality Testing
• often need to find large prime numbers
• traditionally sieve using trial division
– ie. divide by all numbers (primes) in turn less than the
square root of the number
– only works for small numbers
• alternatively can use statistical primality tests
based on properties of primes
– for which all primes numbers satisfy property
– but some composite numbers, called pseudo-primes,
also satisfy the property
• can use a slower deterministic primality test

Miller Rabin Algorithm

• a test based on prime properties that result from
Fermat’s Theorem
• algorithm is:
TEST(n) is:
1. Find integers k,q,k>0,q odd, so that (n–1) = 2kq
2. Select a random integer a, 1 < a < n – 1
3. if aq mod n = 1 then return (“inconclusive");
4. for j = 0 to k – 1 do
5. if (a2jq mod n = n - 1)
then return(“inconclusive")
6. return (“composite")
 Probabilistic Considerations Prime Distribution
• if Miller-Rabin returns “composite” the • prime number theorem states that primes occur
number is definitely not prime roughly every (ln n) integers
• otherwise is a prime or a pseudo-prime • but can immediately ignore evens
• chance it detects a pseudo-prime is < 1/4 • so in practice need only test 0.5 ln(n)
numbers of size n to locate a prime
• hence if repeat test with different random a
– note this is only the “average”
then chance n is prime after t tests is: – sometimes primes are close together
– Pr(n prime after t tests) = 1 – (1/4)t eg. 1,000,000,000,061 and 1,000,000,000,063 both prime
– eg. for t=10 this probability is > 0.99999 – other times are quite far apart
• could then use the deterministic AKS test eg. (1001!+2), (1001!+3) … (1001!+1001) all composite

Chinese Remainder Theorem

• used to speed up modulo computations
• if working modulo a product of numbers
– eg. mod M = m1m2..mk
• Chinese Remainder theorem lets us work
in each modulus mi separately
• since computational cost is proportional to
size, this is faster than working in the full
modulus M
 Chinese Remainder Theorem
given the ai = A mod mi, to compute A (mod M)
– first compute all ai = A mod mi separately
– determine constants ci below, where Mi = M/mi
– then combine results to get answer A using:

Primitive Roots
• by Euler’s theorem we have aø(n) mod n = 1
• consider ak (mod n)with GCD(a,n) = 1, for
various k, and look for m, where am = 1 (mod n)
– works for m = ø(n) but may work for a smaller m too
– once the powers of a reach m, the cycle will repeat
• if smallest value is m = ø(n) then a is called a
primitive root
• if we do this for n = p where p is prime, then
successive powers of a "generate" the
multiplicative group mod p
• these are useful but relatively hard to find
 Powers mod 19 Discrete Logarithms
• the inverse problem to exponentiation is to find
the discrete logarithm of a number b modulo p
• that is to find i such that b = ai (mod p)
• this is written as i = dloga b (mod p)
• if a is a primitive root mod p then dloga always
exists, otherwise it may not, eg.
x = log3 4 mod 13 has no answer
x = log3 3 mod 13 = 4 by trying successive powers
• whilst exponentiation is relatively easy, finding
discrete logarithms is generally a hard problem
(which is good for cryptography, of course)

Discrete Logarithms mod 19