number.wiki
Term

Safe Prime

Primes p where (p − 1)/2 is also prime (5, 7, 11, 23, 47, 59, 83, 107, 167, 179, …).

670 numbers tagged.

A safe prime is a prime \(p\) such that \((p-1)/2\) is also prime. That smaller companion is a Sophie Germain prime, so the two classes are mirror images of each other: \(p\) is safe exactly when \((p-1)/2\) is Sophie Germain.

The "safe" refers to cryptography. The multiplicative group modulo a safe prime has a large prime-order subgroup, which blocks small-subgroup attacks on Diffie–Hellman key exchange, and safe primes resist Pollard's \(p-1\) factoring method. Standardized DH groups (RFC 3526) all use safe primes with thousands of bits.

← all tags