CentralNotice From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation , search In group theory , a branch of mathematics, the baby-step giant-step is a meet-in-the-middle algorithm for computing the discrete logarithm . The discrete log problem is of fundamental importance to the area of public key cryptography . Many of the most commonly used cryptography systems are based on the assumption that the discrete log is extremely difficult to compute; the more difficult it is, the more security it provides a data transfer. One way to increase the difficulty of the discrete log problem is to base the cryptosystem on a larger group. 1 Theory 2 The algorithm 2.1 C algorithm with the GNU MP lib 3 In practice 4 Notes 5 References Theory [ edit ] The algorithm is based on a space-time tradeoff . It is a fairly simple modification of trial multiplication, the n...