> I thought that finding them was the hard part, and verifying one once found > was relatively easy. I used the probable prime test in the Java BigInteger > package. It sounds like, from some of the list traffic, that there are > better tests.
Chapter 4 of the HAC gives a good introduction to all of this. http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/hac/about/chap4.pdf There are probabilistic primality tests (e.g. Miller-Rabin), there are primality proving algorithms (e.g. Jacoby Sum Test, ECPP), some of which give a certificate of primality that can be verified using a different algorithm. Some of the tests work on integers of special forms (e.g. Mersenne numbers), others work on all integers. There are also algorithms that generate integers that are guaranteed to be prime (e.g. Maurer's algorithm), these are not tests... --Anton --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]