Monday, December 5, 2011

Difficult: Nothing, it all made sense. The elliptic curve math is simple, and I am already very familiar with DH and ElGamal.

Reflective: I was sad to see no discussion of message encryption with elliptic curves. It is also sad to just see extensions to known methods that have man-in-the-middle attacks.

Exam Prep:
Important: Math in Z_p, Proofs about the infinitude of primes, how to factor primes, multiplicative functions, characters, encryption, and elliptic curve point addition.

Questions: Pretty much what we have seen so far, but with a focus on encryption.

Understand: There is nothing I actually feel that week on. The biggest problems I have had on the tests to date has been a lack of exactitude, which is my fault and not a problem with what I have learned.

Friday, December 2, 2011

Section 6.3

Difficult: I can read the algorithm just fine, but I feel lost when reading the definition for how they got up to the algorithm. I read it twice, and I still just don't seem to fully grasp it. I can't even tell why.

Reflective: I think it is really cool that we can find medium sized factors of numbers. It makes me think more and more that there must be a quick way to find them. Is there any proof of what time complexity class that factoring numbers belongs to?

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Chapter 6.1-6.2

Difficult: This is all pretty familiar since I have taken the cryptography class before. I would like it if we could see you run the material in sage, but I don't think we have a project in class, so that probably won't be possible.

Reflective: It is very interesting to consider these curves. I still find it amazing that we are able to use them for cryptography.