Assignment 2

1.   The most difficult part of this reading was trying to make sense of the different methods and terms that were flung out in the reading that I have not understanding of, such as all of the different algorithms mentioned. This section will undoubtedly make a lot more sense to me once I do know those terms, and I'm sure we'll shortly find out more about most of them, but it was difficult for me now because I kept trying to figure out as much as I could about each of these terms.

2. I really liked how the reading went through the differences between symmetric and public keys. I feel that will be a very important distinction, especially because of their different uses and levels of practicality from case to case. I wonder though--how much data is required before a symmetric key is more efficient? From the next section, I really appreciated the distinction that was made between authentication and non-repudiation. In our discussion in class, they had still seemed pretty similar to me, so this additional reading on the matter was very helpful for me to clear up why we still distinguish between the two. Reading through 3.1, it is apparent that we'll need these basic methods of mathematics in order to really delve into cryptography, but I wonder exactly how we will need them in order to do so. The first chapter talked a lot about different algorithms that make use of factorization, so things like divisibility, primes, and the Euclidean algorithm will definitely be useful, but I wonder exactly how we will wind up using them. I guess, at this point, only time will tell.