xjava.security.interfaces

Interface RSAFactors

All Known Implementing Classes:

BaseRSAPrivateKey, RawRSAPrivateKey

public interface RSAFactors

An interface with methods to return the factors and coefficient of an RSA modulus. These are useful for speeding up RSA operations using the Chinese Remainder Theorem.

It is not specified which factor is the larger, but the coefficient must be equal to the inverse of q modulo p.

Note that if the encryption exponent e, and the two factors are available to an attacker, the decryption exponent d can be found. This means that the factors must always be kept secret.

The intention is for implementations of RSAPrivateKey (and possibly RSAPublicKey) to optionally implement this interface. Users of RSA keys can check whether the key object is an instanceof RSAFactors, and if so make a further check that the factors are known for this key (i.e. that getP, getQ and getInverseOfQModP return non-null values).

For example:

    import java.security.interfaces.*;
 

    void foo(RSAPrivateKey key) {
        BigInteger p = null, q = null, u = null;
 

        if (key instanceof RSAFactors) {
            RSAFactors factors = (RSAFactors) key;
            p = factors.getP();
            q = factors.getQ();
            u = factors.getInverseOfQModP();
        }
        if (p != null) {
            // efficient code (q and u can be assumed to be non-null)
        } else {
            // less efficient code
        }
    }
 

Key implementations should ensure that either all of the methods defined in this interface return null, or that none of them do.

This interface is not supported in JavaSoft's version of JCE.. To maintain compatibility, the RSAFactors classfile should be included with any application that uses it and may be linked against JavaSoft's JCE, so that the application will not fail with a NoClassDefFoundError.

Copyright © 1997 Systemics Ltd on behalf of the Cryptix Development Team.
All rights reserved.

$Revision: 1.2 $

Since:

IJCE 1.0.1

Author:

David Hopwood

See Also:

RSAKey

Method Summary

Modifier and Type	Method and Description
java.math.BigInteger	getInverseOfQModP() Returns the coefficient, equal to the multiplicative inverse of q modulo p, or null if the factors of the modulus are unknown.
java.math.BigInteger	getP() Returns the first prime factor, p, or null if the factors of the modulus are unknown.
java.math.BigInteger	getQ() Returns the second prime factor, q, or null if the factors of the modulus are unknown.

Method Detail

getP

java.math.BigInteger getP()

Returns the first prime factor, p, or null if the factors of the modulus are unknown.

getQ

java.math.BigInteger getQ()

Returns the second prime factor, q, or null if the factors of the modulus are unknown.

getInverseOfQModP

java.math.BigInteger getInverseOfQModP()

Returns the coefficient, equal to the multiplicative inverse of q modulo p, or null if the factors of the modulus are unknown.