From: Karl Lui Barrus <klbarrus@owlnet.rice.edu>
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 94 11:04:12 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: What, exactly is elliptic encryption?
In-Reply-To: <199412130621.AAA07346@pentagon.io.com>
Message-ID: <9412131903.AA13409@snowy.owlnet.rice.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


dfloyd@io.com wrote:
>What, exactly is elliptic curve encryption?

Well, some other have already described it.  I'll list some references
I've found:

A Course in Number Theory and Cryptography, 2nd edition, Neal Koblitz,
Springer-Verlag.  Chapter 6 is titled "Elliptic Curves" and is split
into four parts: basics, cryptosystems, factorization, primality
testing.

Elliptic Curve Public Key Cryptosystems, Alfred Menezes, Kluwer
Academic Publishers.  Haven't had a chance to read this book yet.
Looks pretty good though :)

Algorithms for Modular Elliptic Curves, J. E. Cremona, Cambridge
University Press.  Found this book last week, along with the above
mentioned Menezes book.  Likewise, I haven't had a chance to read it
yet.  It is divided into three parts: description of contructing
elliptic curves, a collection of algorithms, a huge list of tables.
The algorithms are either in Fortran or in pseudocode (unless the
Fortran used allows semicolons and the sh-like FI keyword).

>(Only thing I knew that the NeXT nearly had it in its OS, but
>the heavy hammer of ITAR squashed that...)

Yeah, for a while a friend and I tried getting that to work, but we
were never successful.  Then, in an version upgrade, the encryption
disappeared ;)

-- 
Karl L. Barrus: klbarrus@owlnet.rice.edu         
2.3: 5AD633;   D1 59 9D 48 72 E9 19 D5  3D F3 93 7E 81 B5 CC 32 
2.6: 088C8F21; 97 73 9E 8B 98 3E DD B5  E8 97 64 7E 20 95 60 D9
"One man's mnemonic is another man's cryptography" - K. Cooper