Re: 42nd Known Mersenne Prime Found == 2^25,964,951-1 == The number has 7,816,230 digits

From: Thomas Pornin (pornin_at_nerim.net)
Date: 02/28/05 

Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 09:08:01 +0000 (UTC)

According to David Wagner <daw-usenet@taverner.cs.berkeley.edu>:
> Does finding another Mersenne prime have any implications for cryptography?

That's very indirect: the continuous search for even greater Mersenne
primes implies that some people are still working on making faster
computations on big integers, finding faster ways to test for primality,
and generally speaking improving mankind's knowledge of arithmetics.
This, in turn, may have some long term consequences on implementations
and attacks of cryptosystems which use big integers.

Of course, on the short term, searching for Mersenne primes is just
another creative way to further deplete the Earth oil and coal stocks,
and increase greenhouse effect.

        --Thomas Pornin

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