To say more on why the elliptic curve application of the ETH break is interesting: So far, elliptic curves have behaved like a black box group. The fastest discrete log algorithm makes no use of the structure of the group and would work even if you couldn't read the coordinates of a point. So the news here is, if the elliptic curve is large enough, then the structure becomes useful for computing discrete logs. Large enough is insanely large so this has currently zero impact for the curves actually in use (and for the curves where it would be an improvement, they would be so large that you can't compute the discrete log with the new algorithm either in the known universe). Still, it's as if something that appeared perfect before now has a tiny crack.