Section 16.5 due on December 11

I'm not sure if I understand why s needs to be mod n in the ElGamal signature scheme.  Other than that, this section made sense to me.

It's interesting how similar ElGamal and elliptic curve ElGamal are, and how the principles of one can be applied to the other.

Section 16.4, due Monday, December 9

This actually made a surprising amount of sense, though I'm confused how to determine the set of possible x values to put in an elliptic curve based on a finite field.  Do we just make one of the finite fields based on the type of finite fields we made before, where they were the set of polynomials modulo a polynomial with binary coefficients?

It was interesting to see how a finite field is used in this context, and also to see more applications of this concept.

Section 16.3, due Friday, December 6

This section was interesting, but I don't understand how it adds anything new to the factoring realm.  I think I'm not getting the bigger picture of how elliptic curves help us factor other than providing interesting opportunities to compute a GCD.

It is interesting to see the modern methods of factoring, and recognize that factoring is a more complex process than we recognize.

Section 16.2, due December 4

I don't understand how plaintext is encoded by elliptic curves.  I see how it's put in the x-point and how you have to be careful about making sure there's a square root to form the y-coordinate, but other than that, I'm lost.

It is interesting to think about the implications of elliptic curve cryptography.  I didn't expect to see it have ways to help with factoring, but I'm excited to see how it can lead to factoring algorithms.