BCSE309L - Cryptography and

Network Security

Module 3
Asymmetric Encryption Algorithm and
Key Exchange

Dr. S. Renuka Devi

Professor
SCOPE
VIT Chennai Campus
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Module Outline
 Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange
 Man-in-the-middle attack
 Distribution of Public Keys
 Elliptic Curve Cryptography

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 Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange
 Purpose - to enable two users to securely
exchange a key that can then be used for
subsequent encryption of messages

 Limited to the exchange of secret values

 It depends for its effectiveness on the difficulty

of computing discrete logarithms

 A primitive root of a prime number is defined as

one whose powers modulo p generate all the
integers from 1 to p-1. 3
 Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange
 That is, if ‘a’ is a primitive root of the prime
number p, then the numbers
a mod p, a2 mod p, …. , ap-1 mod p
are distinct and consist of the integers from 1
through p-1 in some permutation

 For any integer ‘b’ and a primitive root ‘a’ of prime

number, we can find a unique exponent such that
b ≡ ai mod p where 0 ≤ i ≤ (p-1)

 The exponent ‘i’ is referred to as the discrete

logarithm of b for the base a, mod p. 4
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Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange
The calculations at two parties produce identical
results

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Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange
 The security of the Diffie-Hellman key
exchange lies in the fact that, while it is
relatively easy to calculate exponentials
modulo a prime, it is very difficult to calculate
discrete logarithms

 For large primes, the latter task is considered

infeasible

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Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange
 It does not protect against replay attacks

 It is insecure against a man-in-the-middle

attack
 This vulnerability can be overcome with

the use of digital signatures and public-

key certificates

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Man-in-the-middle Attack

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Man-in-the-middle Attack

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Distribution of Public keys

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Public Announcement of Public Keys
 Any participant can send his or her public key
to any other participant or broadcast the key
to the community at large
 Major weakness - Anyone can forge such a
public announcement

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 Publicly Available Directory
 Maintaining a publicly available dynamic directory of
public keys by some trusted entity or organization
 The authority maintains a directory with a {name, public
key} entry for each participant
 Each participant registers a public key with the directory
authority. Registration would have to be in person or by
some form of secure authenticated communication
 A participant may replace the existing key with a new
one at any time
 Participants could also access the directory electronically
through secure, authenticated communication

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Publicly Available Directory

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Public-Key Authority

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Public-Key Certificates

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Elliptic Curve Cryptography

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 Elliptic Curve Arithmetic
 The principal attraction of ECC, compared to RSA,
is that it appears to offer equal security for a far
smaller key size, thereby reducing processing
overhead

 An elliptic curve is defined by an equation in two

variables with coefficients

 For cryptography, the variables and coefficients

are restricted to elements in a finite field ( finite
abelian group)

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 Abelian group
 An abelian group G, sometimes denoted by {G, . },
is a set of elements with a binary operation,
denoted by ‘.’ , that associates to each ordered
pair (a, b) of elements in G an element (a . b) in G,
such that the following axioms are obeyed:
 (A1) Closure: If a and b belong to G, then a . b is
also in G.
 (A2) Associative: a . (b . c) = (a . b) . c for all a, b,
c in G.
 (A3) Identity element: There is an element e in G
such that a . e = e . a = a for all a in G.
 (A4) Inverse element: For each a in G there is an
element a′ in G such that a . a′ = a′ . a = e.
 (A5) Commutative: a . b = b . a for all a, b in G 20
Elliptic Curve Arithmetic
Cubic equations for elliptic curves take the
following form

For given values of a and b, the plot consists of

positive and negative values of y for each value of x.
Thus, each curve is symmetric about y=0

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Elliptic Curve Arithmetic

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 Elliptic Curve Arithmetic
 To define the group, we must define an operation, called addition and
denoted by +,for the set E(a,b) where a and b satisfy the following
equation
4a3 + 27b2 ≠ 0

 In geometric terms, the rules for addition can be stated as follows: If three
points on an elliptic curve lie on a straight line, their sum is O

 ECC makes use of elliptic curves in which the variables and coefficients
are all restricted to elements of a finite field

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 Elliptic Curve Arithmetic
 Two families of elliptic curves are used
 prime curves over Z
p

Binary curves over GF(2m)

 For a prime curve over Zp , we use a cubic equation

in which the variables and coefficients all take on
values in the set of integers from 0 through p – 1

 For a binary curve defined over GF(2m), the

variables and coefficients all take on values in
GF(2m) and in calculations are performed over
GF(2m) 24
Elliptic curves over Zp

For elliptic curves over Zp, the euation is

y2 mod p = (x3 + ax + b) mod p

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Rules for addition over Ep(a, b)

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 ECC Diffie-Hellman Key exchange

* The order n of a point G on an elliptic curve is the smallest positive integer n such that nG = 0 27
ECC Diffie-Hellman Key
exchange

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 Elliptic Curve Encryption
 An encryption/decryption system requires a
Point G and an elliptic group Eq(a,b) as
parameters

 Each user A selects a private key nA and

generates a public key PA = nA * G.

 To encrypt and send a message Pm to B, A

chooses a random positive integer k and
produces the ciphertext Cm consisting of the
pair of points: 29
Elliptic Curve Decryption
 To decrypt the ciphertext, B multiplies the first
point in the pair by B’s secret key and
subtracts the result from the second point:

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 Homomorphic Encryption
 Homomorphic refers to homomorphism in algebra (a
structure-preserving map between two algebraic
structures of the same type such as two groups, two rings,
or two vector spaces)
 The encryption and decryption functions can be thought of
as homomorphisms between plaintext and ciphertext
spaces
 Homomorphic encryption is a form of encryption that
allows computations to be performed on encrypted data
without first having to decrypt it
 The resulting computations are left in an encrypted form.
When decrypted, result in an output is identical to the
operations been performed on the unencrypted data

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 Homomorphic Encryption
 Homomorphic encryption can be either additive or
multiplicative
 Enabling an infinite number of additions or multiplications to
encrypted data is difficult. However, homomorphic encryption
can be divided into different types of encryption, depending on
how it's designed
 If an algorithm is additively homomorphic, then adding two
ciphertexts together provides the same result as encrypting
the sum of the two plaintexts
 Likewise, if an algorithm is multiplicatively homomorphic, then
multiplying two encrypted ciphertexts with the same key is
equivalent to raising the product of plaintexts to the power of a
secret key
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 Types of Homomorphic Encryption
 Partially homomorphic encryption - A defined operation can
be performed infinite times on the ciphertext. These
encryption schemes are relatively easy to design

 Somewhat homomorphic encryption - A limited number of

addition or multiplication operations are allowed, as
opposed to an infinite number of one operation

 Fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) - An infinite number of

additions or multiplications for ciphertexts is enabled

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Types of Homomorphic Encryption

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Applications of Homomorphic
Encryption
 Homomorphic encryption can be used for
privacy-preserving outsourced storage and
computation

This allows data to be encrypted and out-sourced to
commercial cloud environments for processing

 Predictive analytics in health care

 E-cash system

 Handling of user data in social media

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References
 Cryptography and Network Security Principles
And Practice, William Stallings, 5e , Pearson
Education, 2011
 https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/def
inition/homomorphic-encryption
 https://www.splunk.com/en_us/blog/learn/hom
omorphic-encryption.html

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Thank you

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