16.1 Nov. 30th

I am confused about what an elliptic curve is.  I imaged it as the curve of an ellipse, but the graphs didn't make it look like that.  Also, I'm not sure how the addition rule of elliptical curves applies to cryptography.  

article and 19.3 Nov. 20

One thing that I am still confused about what a quantum computer does and how it is different from a normal computer.  Also, what do they mean about creating a superposition?  It's a neat that we can look at powers of a number and look and the modulus classes which creates a pattern. I'd never thought about looking for patterns that way before.  

19.1-19.2 Nov. 18

I've heard about quantum physics before and the whole world confused me. There is obvious structure and patterns in the world we live in so I don't get how we can make it so random and abstract as they do in the quantum world. How can we create laws to study quantum and then apply it to cryptography?

Test Studying Nov. 13

• Which topics and ideas do you think are the most important out of those we have studied?
• RSA
• Birthday Attack
• What kinds of questions do you expect to see on the exam?
• Decrypt this code
• how does RSA work?
• What do you need to work on understanding better before the exam?
• EVERYTHING!!! 
• 
  

12.1-12.2 due nov. 11

It's neat that you can split a secret message that three people need to use together to make it work! I understood the example for three people, but I got a little lost when moving from the specific case to the general case.  actually, I got really lost trying to move it into the general form.  I didn't understand where the matrices came from and where the s values nor what k was.  

9.1-9.4 Nov 9

The need for secure signatures makes sense.  It was funny to think of someone literally copying and pasting a signature onto a check.  With the digital age, it makes sense for an increase of security for signatures.

One thing I was confused about in the RSA method was why did Alice send the message as part of her signature? I thought that was the point of encryption to keep the message secret.  Does a hash function not adequately protect signatures or is that only a problem with the primes aren't big enough?  

8.4-8.5,8.7 November 6

I heard the birthday probability in a 7th grade classroom I observed earlier this year.  When I first heard that if there were 23 people in a room there is a 50% chance of having matching birthdays, I didn't believe it.  Then I saw the math and it makes sense!

What I got confused about was how the birthday method ties into hash functions and discrete logs.  I didn't understand the connection. 

8.1-8.2 Due Nov. 4

If a hash function can really make some of these encryption algorithms simpler, I'm really excited to learn about it!  

One thing that I'm confused about, is that I thought all functions have an inverse, so why is the hash function uninvertible?  

How do you determine if a hash function is strongly collision free or just weekly collision-free?

Also, I'm still struggling how to go from m=x0+x1q to a discreet log problem.