(From Principles of Computer Security, Conklin)

Cryptography has several functions - Hiding Data - Resisting forgery - Resisting unauth change - Resisting reputation - Enforcing policy

One-Time Pads - In theory, they are perfect and unbreakable - Key the same size or larger than the material being encrypted - Plaintext XORed against a key to create cyphertext - “Perfection” is due to the size of the key

Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) - Elliptic curves work because they have a special property - you can add two points on the curve together and get a third point on the curve. - Unless there is a major breakthrough in math, ECC will continue to be a good algorithm.