3.8, 2.5-2.8

1. The most difficult part for me was finding the decryption matrix with a known plaintext attack in section 3.7ish.

2. I was struck by the mention of cryptography in former pop-culture. The chain of secrecy is only as strong as its weakest link. By that, I mean, suppose you have really sensitive information that you are encrypting with RSA-128. That's pretty secure but not impossible to break. It might take some supercomputing resources or some mathematician resources. It then may be the case that one of the ends of the communication link is more vulnerable. If someone has access to the information, maybe they can give that access away. Maybe the going rate for hired goons is lower than mathematicians. Speaking of, mathematicians are generally known (as compared to engineers, say) for their idealism as their world is pure in a sense, perfectly described by certain principles. Devoid of the human element is maybe what I'm getting at. But that's not satisfactory when real security is on the line. I mean, don't some proofs of security rely on the existence of a perfect random oracle, which doesn't exist? Anyway, we can't neglect the human element. That sounds silly.