65537 is commonly used as a public exponent in the RSA cryptosystem. Because it is the Fermat number Fn = 22n + 1 with n = 4, the common shorthand is "F4" or "F4".[3] This value was used in RSA mainly for historical reasons; early raw RSA implementations (without proper padding) were vulnerable to very small exponents, while use of high exponents was computationally expensive with no advantage to security (assuming proper padding).[4]
e having a short bit-length and small Hamming weight results in more efficient encryption – the most commonly chosen value for e is 216 + 1 = 65537. The smallest (and fastest) possible value for e is 3, but such a small value for e has been shown to be less secure in some settings.