Integer Factorization and Computing Discrete Logarithms in Maple

As part of our MITACS research project at Simon Fraser University, we have investigated algorithms for integer factorization and computing discrete logarithms. We have implemented a quadratic sieve algorithm for integer factorization in Maple to replace Maple’s implementation of the MorrisonBrillhart continued fraction algorithm which was done by Gaston Gonnet in the early 1980’s. We have also implemented an indexed calculus algorithm for discrete logarithms in GF(q) to replace Maple’s implementation of Shanks’ baby-step giant-step algorithm, also done by Gaston Gonnet in the early 1980’s. In this paper we describe the algorithms and our optimizations made to them. We give some details of our Maple implementations and present some initial timings. Since Maple is an interpreted language, see [7], there is room for improvement of both implementations by coding critical parts of the algorithms in C. For example, one of the bottle-necks of the indexed calculus algorithm is finding and integers which are B-smooth. Let B be a set of primes. A positive integer y is said to be B-smooth if its prime divisors are all in B. Typically B might be the first 200 primes and y might be a 50 bit integer.