Statistical Analysis of Binary Functional Graphs of the Discrete Logarithm

Abstract: The increased use of cryptography to protect our personal information makes us want to understand the security of cryptosystems. The security of many cryptosystems relies on solving the discrete logarithm, which is thought to be relatively difficult. Therefore, we focus on the statistical analysis of certain properties of the graph of the discrete logarithm. We discovered the expected value and variance of a certain property of the graph and compared the expected value to experimental data. Our finding did not coincide with our intuition of the data following a Gaussian distribution given a large sample size. Thus, we found the theoretical asymptotic distributions of certain properties of the graph.