RSAvisual
Jun Tao, Jun Ma, Melissa Keranen, Jean Mayo, Ching-Kuang Shene, Chaoli Wang · 2014
This paper describes a visualization tool RSAvisual that helps students learn and instructors teach the RSA cipher. This tool permits the user to visualize the steps of the RSA cipher, do encryption and decryption, learn simple factorization algorithms, and perform some elementary attacks. The demo mode of RSAvisual can be used for classroom presentation and self-study. With the practice mode, the user may go through steps in encryption, decryption, the Extended Euclidean algorithm, two simple factorization algorithms and three elementary attacks. The user may compute the output of each operation and check for correctness. This helps students learn the primitive operations and how they are used in the RSA cipher. The opportunity for self-study provides an instructor with greater flexibility in selecting a lecture pace for the detailed materials. Classroom evaluation was positive and very encouraging.