---
title: Cryptosystems with Standardized Primes Could Have Backdoor in Encrypted Communications
description: Only the creators would know if the cryptography primes were intentionally backdoored.
---

[SecureWorld News ](https://www.secureworld.io/industry-news)

# [Cryptosystems with Standardized Primes Could Have Backdoor in Encrypted Communications](https://www.secureworld.io/industry-news/cryptosystems-with-standardized-primes-could-have-backdoor-in-encrypted-communications)

 Written by [SecureWorld News Team](https://www.secureworld.io/industry-news/author/secureworld-news-team) | Wed | Oct 12, 2016 | 7:00 AM Z

Only the creators would know if the cryptography primes were intentionally backdoored. 

[CSO Explains:](http://www.csoonline.com/article/3130068/security/encrypted-communications-could-have-an-undetectable-backdoor.html)

> Researchers warn that many 1024-bit keys used to secure communications on the internet today might be based on prime numbers that have been intentionally backdoored in an undetectable way.
> 
> Many public-key cryptography algorithms that are used to secure web, email, VPN, SSH and other types of connections on the internet derive their strength from the mathematical complexity of discrete logarithms -- computing discrete logarithms for groups of large prime numbers cannot be efficiently done using classical methods. This is what makes cracking strong encryption computationally impractical.
> 
> Most key-generation algorithms rely on prime parameters whose generation is supposed to be verifiably random. However, many parameters have been standardized and are being used in popular crypto algorithms like Diffie-Hellman and DSA without the seeds that were used to generate them ever being published. That makes it impossible to tell whether, for example, the primes were intentionally "backdoored" -- selected to simplify the computation that would normally be required to crack the encryption.

[View full post](https://www.secureworld.io/industry-news/cryptosystems-with-standardized-primes-could-have-backdoor-in-encrypted-communications)

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