Minding your p's and q's

Abstract

Over the last year or two, a large number of attacks have been found by the authors and others on protocols based on the discrete logarithm problem, such as ElGamal signature and Diffie Hellman key exchange. These attacks depend on causing variables to assume values whose discrete logarithms can be calculated, whether by forcing a protocol exchange into a smooth subgroup or by choosing degenerate values directly. We survey these attacks and discuss how to build systems that are robust against them. In the process we elucidate a number of the design decisions behind the US Digital Signature Standard.