# Cryptographer's Anthem

### Lyrics © 1995 Stephen Savitzky. Some Rights Reserved. To the tune of To Anacreon in Heaven''

Oh, say, PGP, and RSA public key
Cryptosystems are simple, with primes $q$ and $p$;
Call the product of one less than each of them $k$
I pick $d$ and $e$, whose product is $1\bmod k$.

    Now I just publish $d$, and the product $qp$,
You raise $d$ to the power of message block $b$;
Take that modulo $pq$ and send it to me.
And I'll use it as the exponent of private key $e$.

Now this program can fit into three lines of code,
Using perl and dc, though the logic's distorted.
Cryptographic machines are a weapon of war,
And the government says they must not be exported.

    Make a barcoded card, or if you are a bard
run the code through a modem, it's not very hard.
\spoken{\quotation{
Now, if I were being mean I'd stick some modem tones in here}}


    Then this song would be a munition, its music you could never take
From the land of the free, and the home of the brave.


The description of the RSA public key crpytography algorithm is mathematically accurate; though it's worth noting that any practical implementation will do the exponentiation and modules in a single operation. Perhaps the only obscure point occurs when specifying that $de \equiv 1 \bmod (p-1)(q-1)$. The twisted phraseology that defines $k$ as $(p-1)(q-1)$ is particularly kludgy, but what the hell, it scans.

http://Steve.Savitzky.net/Songs/crypto/
Automatically generated with flktran from ../Lyrics/crypto.flk.
$Id: crypto.flk,v 1.8 2010-10-15 18:10:20 steve Exp$