section 16.5

Difficult: I'm a little confused about the El Gamal with elliptic curves.

Interesting: It's interesting how fairly simple it is to convert these systems into elliptic curves

section 16.4

Difficult: I'm still confused about what omega is in GF(4).

Interesting: The fact that finding -P from P in mod 2 is different than other cases is interesting to know.

section 16.3

Difficult: I don't think I really understood how to find the factors using elliptic curves very well.

Interesting: I thought the idea of smooth and b-smooth numbers was interesting since I've never really learned about them before by name. I didn't know there was a name for those numbers! I think it's pretty awesome that someone cared about them enough to name them, though I do wonder why they chose those names.

section 16.2

Difficult: Discrete logarithms sound like they would be difficult to do with elliptic curves.

Interesting: It's interesting that there's a way to use elliptic curves to encode/decode messages. In all honesty, before that last bit of the section, I was like, what the heck does this have to do with cryptography. And now I am beginning to see the possibilities. Pretty cool how people can come up with these ideas for cryptosystems.

section 16.1

Difficult: I'm not sure I understood the adding points part very well.

Interesting: the whole concept was interesting since I've never learned about it before that I can remember, but I don't really get what this has to do with Cryptography.