Section 16.5, due December 5

The hardest part of the section was the explanation of the El Gamal digital signature algorithm for elliptic curve cryptosystems.

It's interesting how much simpler certain cryptographic algorithms can be when they are implemented using elliptic curves.  This is because the operations that are analogous to modular multiplication and modular exponentiation on elliptic curves are much easier to perform, but are just as strong cryptographically as systems implemented using large prime numbers.  It's interesting to see alternate ways of implementing familiar cryptosystems.

Section 16.4, due December 3

This was a pretty confusing section.  I'm having a hard time understanding elliptic curves over finite fields.  An longer explanation of the example in the section would really help.

Elliptic curves are interesting but they just seem to become less and less and intuitive the more I learn about them.  It is interesting that NIST recommended 15 specific elliptic curves (mod 2) for use in elliptic curve cryptosystems.  I might be wrong, but it seems that ECC is easier to implement than RSA since you choose from fewer curves, and key generation is easier than RSA.  But it's still a strong system.  That's just my initial thought.