This website is a semi-functional mirror of the original Project Euler. More information is available on GitHub.
projecteuler.net

RSA encryption

Problem 182

Published on 15 February 2008 at 01:00 pm [Server Time]

The RSA encryption is based on the following procedure:

Generate two distinct primes p and q.
Compute n=pq and φ=(p-1)(q-1).
Find an integer e, 1<e<φ, such that gcd(e,φ)=1.

A message in this system is a number in the interval [0,n-1].
A text to be encrypted is then somehow converted to messages (numbers in the interval [0,n-1]).
To encrypt the text, for each message, m, c=me mod n is calculated.

To decrypt the text, the following procedure is needed: calculate d such that ed=1 mod φ, then for each encrypted message, c, calculate m=cd mod n.

There exist values of e and m such that me mod n=m.
We call messages m for which me mod n=m unconcealed messages.

An issue when choosing e is that there should not be too many unconcealed messages.
For instance, let p=19 and q=37.
Then n=19*37=703 and φ=18*36=648.
If we choose e=181, then, although gcd(181,648)=1 it turns out that all possible messages
m (0≤mn-1) are unconcealed when calculating me mod n.
For any valid choice of e there exist some unconcealed messages.
It's important that the number of unconcealed messages is at a minimum.

Choose p=1009 and q=3643.
Find the sum of all values of e, 1<e<φ(1009,3643) and gcd(e,φ)=1, so that the number of unconcealed messages for this value of e is at a minimum.


Answer:
Go to back to Problems