February 26, 2002
Practical Aspects of Modern Cryptography
45
Why use Elliptic Curves?
nThe best currently known algorithm for EC discrete logarithms would take about as long to find a 160-bit EC discrete log as the best currently known algorithm for integer discrete logarithms would take to find a 1024-bit discrete log.
n160-bit EC algorithms are somewhat faster and use shorter keys than 1024-bit “traditional” algorithms.