Taxonomy and Practical Evaluation of Primality Testing Algorithms

Abstract: Modern cryptography algorithms are commonly used to ensure information security. Prime numbers are needed in many asymmetric cryptography algorithms. For example, RSA algorithm selects two large prime numbers and multiplies to each other to obtain a large composite number whose factorization is very difficult. Producing a prime number is not an easy task as they are not distributed regularly through integers. Primality testing algorithms are used to determine whether a particular number is prime or composite. In this paper, an intensive survey is thoroughly conducted among the several primality testing algorithms showing the pros and cons, the time complexity, and a brief summary of each algorithm. Besides, an implementation of these algorithms is accomplished using Java and Python as programming languages to evaluate the efficiency of both the algorithms and the programming languages.