Ah ok, so the dot operation is associative I guess?
---
I mean, once you have the keys, how do you actually use them to transform data?
---
I mean, once you have the keys, how do you actually use them to transform data?
Instead we usually multiply our private key by someone else’s public key to get a point.
We take that points x value, hash it and use the output as a symmetric key.
The other person can take our public key and multiply it by their private key to get the same point.
We end up with something like this:
OurPrivate * TheirPub == secret point.
(TheirPub is actually equal to TheirPrivateG, thus the secret point is really OurPrivateTheirPrivate*G)
“Encryption” with elliptic curves is just ECDH and then using a symmetric cipher like AES.
Signature is a little more complicated. It’s not just “encrypting a hash”