Publications

Experimenting with Shared Generation of RSA keys

Authors: M. Malkin, T. Wu, and D. Boneh

Abstract:
We describe an implementation of a distributed algorithm to generate a shared RSA key. At the end of the computation, an RSA modulus N=pq is publicly known. All servers involved in the computation are convinced that N is a product of two large primes, however none of them know the factorization of N. In addition a public encryption exponent is publicly known and each server holds a share of the private exponent. Such a sharing of an RSA key has many applications and can be used to secure sensitive private keys. Previously, the only known method to generate a shared RSA key was through a trusted dealer. Our implementation demonstrates the effectiveness of shared RSA key generation eliminating the need for a trusted dealer.

Reference:
In proceedings of the Internet Society's 1999 Symposium on Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS), pp. 43--56

Full paper: PostScript         [first posted 10/1998 ]

Related papers: See the full paper describing the algorithm.