7.2, Due on October 29

I enyoed reading about Baby Step, Giant Step (section 7.2.2). Not only did it remind me of Buzz Aldrin's famous quote, but it also reminded me of the meet-in-the-middle attacks from the earlier sections. I also liked reading this section in light of the material about factoring. Knowing that the past two weeks have been spent learning how to factor in order to break weak RSA systems helped me understand why we are learning all this information about discrete log problems. I'm guessing that the discrete logarithm problems are going to be used in a public key cryptosystem and all this information we are learning is going to help us crack weak versions of that system.
The two hardest subsections for me were 7.2.1 about the Pohlig-Hellman Algorithm and 7.2.3 about the Index Calculus. The examples were quite long and despite finally understanding the log notation I had difficulty understanding it in light of the examples.