3 ms·

How do elliptical curves fit into this?

• pdpi 6y ago
  “Discrete logarithm” in this context alludes to the problem of calculating discrete logarithms for elliptic curves over finite fields.
  • ColinWright 6y ago
    Not necessarily, the term "discrete logarithm" also alludes to calculating them in other contexts such as modulo p for p prime. It's not always on elliptic curves, and when I started in this field it was never on ECs. But your comment is largely true, this is a minor point ... I make it only for completeness, and for people who later find this comment.
• gautamcgoel 6y ago
  The proper term is "elliptic curve", just FYI.
• tromp 6y ago
  Elliptic curves are uniformly hard. If you could solve the elliptic curve discrete log problem (ECDLP) on any non-negligible fraction of inputs, then you'd break a lot of cryptography. In fact, the use of Pedersen commitments is based on nobody knowing the logarithm log(H) of a specific curve point H with respect to the standard base G. An efficient algorithm for solving ECDLP on a non-negligible fraction of inputs, could fail on input H, but one would eventually work on some random input r * H for a randomly picked scalar r, giving log(H) as log(r * H) / r.