Notes on Eliptic Curves

Cryptographic operations that use groups (e.g. DH) are

rewritten to use
the groups of rational points of elliptic curves over finite
fields

Field: has + and ×

Group: just has + (needs identity element)

Any field F is an abelian group (also called a

commutative group) under addition

Finite Fields ≡ Galois fields

Order of field = number of elements

For scalar n, n ⋅ a = a + a + … + a (which is an element

of F)

If there is no positive integer such that n ⋅ 1 = 0, F is

said to have characteristic 0

What good note-taking apps are there that work for

things like formulae? I normally just use text files/Apple
Notes, but with the crypto I need to take snippets from
web sites which include formulae. I figure students must
have to do this!
Also added:

Notes from the first day:

https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

Attacking close to user: easier, but lower yield

Next gen (?) of WiFi standard will fix the “sharing wifi”
problem (2022?)

In 2014, two large email providers enabled encryption -

hence up-ticks in the
Google transparency report - 30% outbound email
encrypted

Firesheep - Firefox plugin

WiFi - monitor mode (promiscuous mode?)

https://letsencrypt.org/stats/

1994 - when web encryption first released

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Transport_Layer_Security#SSL_1.0,_2.0,_and_3.0

~ 12% of web pages use encryption

Even now, 2021, nowhere need majority of web sites

using encryption!
CAs: digicert, komodo, verisign, …

Financial barrier to entry

2016 - Let’s Encrypt started

- largest CA in 4 years
- except on metric of revenue!

Majority of people using Let’s Encrypt were those who

previously weren’t using encryption

Financial barrier to using TLS

Nowadays people get certs included in overall service

POODLE 2015 - SSL v3

RC4 - now deprecated

Code weaknesses and bugs - Heartbleed

Browser behaviour - ? Several are not favourable to

security

HTTPS = HTTP + TLS

Hi, creating a group here as we’re all on the TLS

training, and I don’t know how to create an ad-hoc group
in Slack. Have I missed anyone?

Why we need forward security:

Lavabit - Snowden’s email provider

Secret fisa court warrant

- get private keys

Also: heartbleed

We will consider PFS mandatory in TLS 1.2 during the

course

TC Qs: how does code size for RSA compare to that for
EC?

Rotate key at same time as rotating certificate

Need a Domain Validation certificate - prove control of

domain

HTTP validation:
- CA gives a challenge code, put a file at a path
- OR: put this string in a DNS text record

DCV - domain control validation