RSA released into the public domain

[Ralf-Philipp Weinmann]

> BTW, I notice that RSA are talking about something called "MultiPrime" -
> what's that, then?

MultiPrime means nothing more than having a modulus that isn't
the product of two primes but of more than two primes (this is supposed
to increase performance in multiprocessor environments where you can
exponentiate modulo each prime and apply the CRT to combine it into your
result). If my memory serves me right Compaq patented this about a year ago 
now licenses "MultiPrime technology" exclusively to RSA Security Inc.
I cannot really see use or need for it however other than being able to
claim to have a 8192 bit key which will be no stronger than my 2048 bit
key. And as to issuing a patent for this one should *really* check for
prior art (btw. I didn't find a patent number on IBM's server looking for
the obvious keywords. maybe it's still pending).

For an overview of MultiPrime check out
http://himalaya.compaq.com/brfs_wps/esscpttb/esscpttb.htm

Cheers,
Ralf

--
Ralf-P. Weinmann <rpw@uni.de>
PGP fingerprint: 2048/46C772078ACB58DEF6EBF8030CBF1724