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A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-Key Cryptosystems (Rivest, Shamir, Adleman 1978)

Last modified: 2026-10-27

DOI: 10.1145/359340.359342 · URL: https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/Rsapaper.pdf

Summary

Introduces the RSA public-key cryptosystem and signature scheme, based on the difficulty of factoring large integers. RSA signatures remain widespread in deployed identity documents and PKIs, so ZKP-based e-ID approaches that reuse legacy credentials must sometimes prove RSA verification in-circuit; RSA groups also underlie CL signatures. (Communications of the ACM 21(2), 1978.)

Related resources

• A Signature Scheme with Efficient Protocols (Camenisch, Lysyanskaya 2002) (paper, 2002)
• New Directions in Cryptography (Diffie, Hellman 1976) (paper, 1976)