Exam 1 Preparation, due on September 28

• Which topics and ideas do you think are the most important out of those we have studied?
• I think that understanding the basics of divisibility, GCDs, the Euclidean Algorithm in different mods will be important and that knowing how to do this with polynomials will demonstrate whether we really understand the concepts. 
• I think we need to know how to encrypt and decrypt messages in the basic cryptographic methods we have learned, like Vigenere ciphers, affine ciphers, alphabet shifts, and hill ciphers
• I think we will need to know how to examine the strength of different methods and know how to break them 
• What kinds of questions do you expect to see on the exam?
• I expect you to ask us to define some of the definitions you gave us in class and to state some of the theorems you gave us. However, I don't think you'll ask us to memorize and recite any of the proofs. 
• I expect you to ask us the weaknesses and strengths of different methods
• I expect there to be a GCD problem, an inverse problem, a matrix problem, an Extended Euclidean Algorithm problem, and I bet you have us solve an affine cipher. 
• Finite Fields will definitely come up
• I think you'll ask us about meet-in-the-middle strategies
• What do you need to work on understanding better before the exam?
• I need to understand more about Meet in the Middle attacks
• I need to learn about the strengths and weaknesses of the different modes of operation because right now the only thing I know about them is how to use them. 
• I need to try to better understand pseudorandom bit generation and LFSR's
• I need to study up on affine ciphers, because I don't remember how to crack them