14.1-14.2, due on 14 November

What was the most difficult part of the material for you?

The Feige-Fiat-Shamir Identification Scheme is a little interesting. The trickiest part was understanding how Eve might be able to get away with certain selections of x if she knows the bitstring beforehand.

What was the most interesting part of the material?

I think the idea of zero-knowledge techniques is very fascinating. I think it is very cool that there is a scheme where one can identify oneself without revealing any part of the secret, and that the verifier can be satisfied. 

12.1-12.2, due on 12 November

What was the most difficult part of the material for you?

Thinking about the (t,x)-threshold problem is a little interesting at first. I was also thoughtful about the Vandermonde matrix always being invertible.

What was the most interesting part of the material?

I think the idea of a shared secret is wonderfully interesting. I really enjoy how the schemes come together, and the practical implications for using such tools. This is a very interesting application of cryptography. 

9.1-9.4, due on November 5

What was the most difficult part of the material for you?

The most difficult part of the material was the section about the ElGamal signature scheme. There are more components of the signature than the RSA signature, and keeping track of all the pieces is more difficult.

What was the most interesting part of the material?

I think the idea of digitally signing documents is very interesting. I think it is a very cool idea to be able to prove that somebody has signed something. I think that this is a key part of the technology behind things like bitcoins.

8.4-8.5 and 8.7, due on November 2

What was the most difficult part of the material for you?

The most difficult part of the material was the section on multicollisions. It was difficult applying the birthday attack ideas to this idea.

What was the most interesting part of the material?

I think that birthday attacks are very interesting. It is a neat counter-intuitive problem. It once again shows why rigor is necessary along with intuition.

6.4.1-6.4.2 due on October 22

What was the most difficult part of the material for you?

In the Universal Exponent Factorization Method, there are a log of conditions and checks. Keeping track of all the conditions and checks is the most difficult part of the material.

What was the most interesting part of the material?

I think it is very interesting to see the linear algebra application in the Quadratic Sieve method of factorization. I think it is a clever way to do it, and I always enjoy seeing connections of linear algebra to number theory.

6.3, due on October 17

What was the most difficult part of the material for you?

The Miller-Rabin Primality test was the most difficult part of the material for me. There were a lot of details as to why the test usually works. Following all these steps was difficult.

What was the most interesting part of the material?

I think it is very interesting that probabilistic methods are used in determining the primality of big numbers. It seems that RSA and other algorithms perhaps rely on these methods? If so then I wonder if there is anything exploitable with that. If not, then I guess that polynomial time deterministic algorithm is what is used in RSA implementations.

3.10, due on October 15

What was the most difficult part of the material for you?

As the book said, "it can be rather difficult to use by hand". Following all the by hand calculations was the most difficult part.

What was the most interesting part of the material? 

I really like the new ideas of Lengendre and Jacobi symbols. I think that they have interesting properties, and there are some cool tricks you can do with them.