Groups from cyclic infrastructures and Pohlig-Hellman in certain infrastructures

Abstract

In discrete logarithm based cryptography, a method by Pohlig and Hellman allows solving the discrete logarithm problem efficiently if the group order is known and has no large prime factors. The consequence is that such groups are avoided. In the past, there have been proposals for cryptography based on cyclic infrastructures. We will show that the Pohlig-Hellman method can be adapted to certain cyclic infrastructures, which similarly implies that certain infrastructures should not be used for cryptography. This generalizes a result b Show more