# Prime modulus for RSA and sharing a secret?

According to this paper entitled "Using Commutative Encryption to Share a Secret" they define their modulus to be a large prime p, which is public. Both exponents are private in this case.

According to the wikipedia article on RSA link the modulus has to be a product of two primes, and " p, q, and φ(n) must also be kept secret because they can be used to calculate d.", and the exponent can be public.

In the paper both the modulus (p) and φ(p) are known. How is the algorithm in the paper secure? Is it because both keys are private?

Is there a secure way for the same modulus to be used across all parties, and $a_i$ are public for each user?

• What does RSA have to do with this? Feb 9 '15 at 22:22
• Diffie Hellman has a single, public modulus and is still secure. Feb 9 '15 at 23:11
• You might be interested in Mental Poker which is similar, and states that the modulus used can be of known factorization, including prime.
– fgrieu
Feb 10 '15 at 8:09

For RSA, $\varphi(n)$ must be kept secret since with that you could factor $n$ (and hence make the hard problem easy). With the scheme you link to, you must keep the exponent secret as that is what you are trying to solve for when computing a discrete logarithm.