Re: Is my DH exchange secure?

[hfinney@shell.portal.com]

With a strong prime, there is no need to use generators, as Eric implied.
Looking at Phil's list, we see 2's and 5's being chosen as generators.  Even
for those cases where 2 is not a generator, it has period (n-1)/2.  This
is just as good, from what I understand.  Finding the discrete log depends
on the size of the modulus, not on the size of the group, unless the size
of the group is drastically less than the size of the modulus.  That is why
the DSA uses a modulus of 512 bits and a group of size 160 bits.  Even a
group this small provides all the security associated with a 512 bit modulus.
(Caveat: I haven't been able to find my reference to this, but I read it a
few weeks ago in a crypto paper, and I am confident it is standard number
theory/cryptography.)  In the case of a 1024 bit strong prime, non-generators
(other than 1 and -1) have period of size 1023 bits, just as good for all prac-
tical purposes.

For what I was calling "strongish" primes, which are about 100 times easier to
find (primes of the form kq+1, where q is prime and k is around 100),  I
think it is also unnecessary to check for generator-hood.  Non-generators are
overwhelmingly likely to have periods greater than 1000 bits in size, which
provides all the security of the 1024 bit modulus.

Putting this together, secure Diffie-Hellman is much easier to do than the
more careful implementations require.  Picking a strongish prime need not
take much longer than choosing an RSA key of twice the size (e.g. it takes
about as long to choose a strongish 1024 bit prime as to create a 2048 bit
RSA key).  Then pick a random element as the base for the DH exponentiation,
choose your x's and y's at random, and go.  Adding the extra checks really
doesn't increase the security.

Hal