Thursday, November 12, 2009

Midterm 2

1. It would be hard to say what is most important. On the one hand, we have studied RSA fairly extensively and gotten into the nitty gritty, and that's very practical. On the other, the more abstract security requirements and how certain principles can hide information in certain ways to meet those requirements is also important. My answer would vary day to day, I think.

2. I expect to see some purely algorithmic questions, like to decode a simple ElGamal message to to use Pohlig-Hellman to solve a discrete log. Maybe some hash questions.

3. ElGamal.

4. Coding theory and information theory. Mostly information theory. Here's one: It would be better to compress a message before encrypting it to maximize compression, as opposed to encrypting before compressing, right? Or is it a wash? Or does it depend. It probably depends.

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