Computational Complexity Study of RSA and Elgamal Algorithms

Abstract

The Elgamal and RSA algorithms are two of the cryptographic techniques that are actively in use for securing data confidentiality and authentication. The energy usage analysis of the two algorithms has been investigated and it was established that RSA is more energy efficient than Elgamal. The goal of this study is to carry out computational speeds analysis of the two algorithms. The methodology employed involves implementation of the algorithms using same programming language, programming style and skill, and programming environment. The implementation is tested with text data of varying sizes. The results obtained reveal that holistically RSA is superior to Elgamal in terms of computational speeds; however, the study concludes that a hybrid algorithm of both the RSA and Elgamal algorithms would most likely outperform either the RSA or Elgamal. It is therefore recommended that efforts at designing a new algorithm from the study of these two algorithms should be considered.