Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Sec 16.5, due Dec 9th

Well, today is the day (I mean tonight is the night ;) ) the very last blog entry. It is a sad day and one that I wished would never come, but it is here and the last blog must be written. First, I just wanna say, Thank you for such a wonderful class! This was by far my favorite class all semester and I wish there were more classes I could take and more that I could learn! You've be a great teacher, one of the favorites! Thank you for everything, and I'll see you in our last class today. :(
1. I was curious as to how alpha multiplied by a was comparable to a discrete log. I know we learned about this is section 16.2, but it was brought to my attention again today for the reading and last night in the homework. In section 16.2 (I think) it talks about discrete logs for elliptic curves, and how beta=a*alpha may not look like a discrete log, but it was.. or something like that, I was just a little confused on that. Anyway, these have all been great sections, and I've really enjoyed this entire book! I can't believe that it's already over!! Thanks again for everything!
2. I really liked this section a lot. It was fun to see how all the cryptosystems that we have learned and used before can now be done using elliptic curves! I think that this is why I understand this section pretty well, because I've seen the basics of this all before, and that's really cool, because it's easier to understand and interesting!

Monday, December 7, 2009

Sec 16.4, due Dec 7th

1. I felt like I pretty much understood everything in this section, but seeing the examples done in class always help me understand everything better, so I'll be looking forward to that.
2. This was a really good section, and it was pretty easy to understand. It's nice how the examples used the finite fields that we've been using as examples all semester, it really helps to understand.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Sec 16.3, due Dec 4th

1. The Singular curves part in this section was kind of confunsing for me, I just had a hard time following the example, probably because I'm tired, but that was what confused me. i'm sure I'll be able to understand it better in class.
2.This section was really cool! I love learing new ways to factor large n's, and now we have an even newer one, with elliptic curves! Also, it's always fun to learn new definitions, such as smooth and B-smooth (which is kinda funny cause it sounds like you're telling the elliptic curve to "be smooth" around this lady curve that it's going to intersect...ok, jk, I'm tired :) ) ANYWAY, this was a great section and I love learning about these elliptic curves!

PS Loved the cryptography pictures!!! They were awesome! :)

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Sec 16.2, due Dec 2nd

1. I really liked this section, but I was a little confused on how to represent plaintext as an elliptic curve and mapping the message on to a point on that curve. The example on page 356 was just a tad confusing, but when we go over it in class I'm sure I'll understand!
2. I really enjoy reading these sections! It's fun to learn about elliptic curves and how many different uses that they have! You can use them for discrete logs and for representing plaintext! I love learning about this stuff!