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16 Crypto

Cryptography involves secret key algorithms like AES that encrypt messages using a shared key, and public key algorithms like RSA that allow secure communication without pre-shared keys using public/private key pairs. Cryptography is entirely dependent on keys, so key length, distribution, and protection are critical. While cryptography techniques aim to provide secure communication, implementation and human factors can still enable attacks.

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DIAN SURGAWIWAHA
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78 views8 pages

16 Crypto

Cryptography involves secret key algorithms like AES that encrypt messages using a shared key, and public key algorithms like RSA that allow secure communication without pre-shared keys using public/private key pairs. Cryptography is entirely dependent on keys, so key length, distribution, and protection are critical. While cryptography techniques aim to provide secure communication, implementation and human factors can still enable attacks.

Uploaded by

DIAN SURGAWIWAHA
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Cryptography

• history
– Caesar cipher, rot13
– substitution ciphers, etc.
– Enigma (Turing)
• modern secret key cryptography
– DES, AES
• public key cryptography
– RSA, PGP, PKI
• crypto politics

Cryptography basics
• Alice & Bob want to exchange messages
– keeping the content secret
– though not the fact that they are communicating
• they need some kind of secret that scrambles messages
– makes them unintelligible to bad guys but intelligible to good guys

• the secret is a "key" (like a password)


– known only to the communicating parties
– that is used to do the scrambling and unscrambling

– for Caesar cipher, the "key" is the amount of the shift (A => D, etc.)
– for substitution ciphers, the key is the permutation of the alphabet
– for Enigma, key is wiring and position of wheels plus settings of patches

– for modern ciphers, the key is a large integer used as part of an


intricate algorithmic operation on the bits of the message
Modern secret key cryptography
• messages encrypted and decrypted with a shared secret key
– usually the same key for both operations ("symmetric")
• encryption/decryption algorithm is known to adversaries
– "security by obscurity" does not work
• attacks
– decrypt specific message(s) by analysis
various combinations of known or chosen plaintext and ciphertext
– determine key by "brute force" (try all possible keys)
• if key is compromised, all past and future messages are
compromised
• big problem: key distribution
– need a secure way to get the key to both/all parties
diplomatic pouches, secret agents, …
– doesn't work when the parties don't know each other
– or have no possible channel for exchanging a secret key
– or when want to exchange secret messages with many different parties
e.g., credit card numbers on Internet

DES and AES


• Data Encryption Standard (DES)
– developed ~1977 by IBM, with NSA involvement
– widely used, though lingering concerns about trap doors
– 56-bit key is now too short:
can exhaustively test all keys in a few hours
with comparatively cheap special-purpose hardware
– "triple DES" uses 3 DES encryptions to increase effective key length

• Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)


– result of an international competition run by NIST (www.nist.gov/aes)
– completely open: algorithms and analyses in public domain
– Rijndael: winning algorithm selected October 2000
approved as official US government standard
– 128, 192, 256-bit keys
– fast in both hardware and software implementations
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
• Rijndael
– Joan Daemen & Vincent Rijmen, Belgium
– 128, 192, 256-bit keys

Public key cryptography


• fundamentally new idea
– Diffie & Hellman (USA, 1976); earlier in England but kept secret
• each person has a public key and a private key
– the keys are mathematically related
– a message encrypted with one can only be decrypted with the other
• public keys are published, visible to everyone
• private keys are secret, known only to owner

• Alice sends a secret message to Bob by


– encrypting it with Bob's public key
– only Bob can decrypt it, using his private key
• Bob sends a secret reply to Alice by
– encrypting it with Alice's public key
– only Alice can decrypt it, using her private key
Digital signatures
• can use public key cryptography for digital signatures
– if Alice encrypts a message with her private key
– and it decodes properly with her public key
– it had to be Alice who encoded it
• signature can be attached to a message
– Alice encrypts a message with her private key
– Alice encrypts the result with Bob's public key
– only Bob can decrypt this (with his private key)
but it won't make any sense yet
– Bob then decrypts it with Alice's public key
– if it decodes properly, it had to be Alice who encrypted it originally
• necessary properties of digital signatures
– can only be done by the right person: can't be forged
– can't re-use a signature to sign something else
– signature attached to a document: signs specific contents
– signature can't be repudiated

Digital signatures, continued


• usually done by signing a "cryptographic hash" of a document, not
the document itself
• secure hash is computed by an algorithm
• reduces any data to a comparatively short number such that
– can't deduce the original document from the number
– any change to the original document produces a completely different
hash
– can't find another document that has the same hash
• current secure hash algorithms
– MD5 (Rivest, MIT): 128 bits
– SHA-1 (US government standard): 160 bits
• new international competition to create a new version of SHA-1
– analogous to AES competition (again run by NIST)
– first round submissions 10/31/08
– e.g., http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11536?ref=rss
RSA public key cryptographic algorithm
• most widely used public key system
• invented by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, Len Adleman, 1977?
– patent expired Sept 2000, now in public domain

• based on (apparent) difficulty of factoring very large integers


– "large" >= 1024 bits ~ 300 digits
– public key based on product of two large (secret) primes
– encrypting and decrypting require knowledge of the factors
• slow, so usually use RSA to exchange a secret "session key"
– session key used for secret key encryption with AES
– used by SSH for secure login
– used by browsers for secure exchange of credit card numbers
https: http with encryption
– SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or TLS (Transport Layer Security)
used to encrypt TCP/IP

Public key personae

• Martin Hellman,
Whitfield Diffie

• Adi Shamir,
Ron Rivest,
Len Adleman
How does RSA work? (you are not expected to remember this)

• choose two big primes p and q (~100 digits each)


• compute N = p ° q (~200 digits)
• select e, relatively prime to (p-1) °(q-1)
• compute d such that e ° d = 1 mod (p-1) °(q-1)
• public key is (e, N), private key is d

• to encode message m, c = me mod N


• to decode message c, m = cd mod N
• decoding is easy if you know d, but hard if you don't:
– you have to figure out p-1 and q-1
– so you have to figure out p and q
– so you have to factor N
– and that's too hard

A tiny example
• p = 17, q = 11 (primes)
• N = 17 ° 11 = 187
• e = 7 (relatively prime to p-1 ° q-1 = 16 ° 10 = 160)
• d = 23 (7 ° 23 = 161 = 1 mod 160)
• public key is (7, 187); private key is 23

• to encode “X” (88 in ascii),


compute 887 mod 187 = 11

• to decrypt 11,
compute 1123 mod 187 = 88
Properties of public/private keys
• can't deduce the public key from the private, or vice versa
• can't find another encryption key that works with the decryption
key
• keys are long enough that brute force search is infeasible

• nasty problems:
– if a key is lost, all messages and signatures are lost
– if a key is compromised, all messages and signatures are compromised
– it's hard to revoke a key
– it's hard to repudiate a key (and hard to distinguish that from revoking)

• authentication
– how do you know who you are talking to? is that really Alice's public key?
– public key infrastructure, web of trust, digital certificates

Crypto politics
• cryptographic techniques as weapons of war?
– until recently, (strong) cryptography was classified as "munitions" in USA
– falls under International Traffic in Arms Regulations and follow-ons
• export control laws prohibited export of cryptographic code
– though it was ok to export books and T-shirts with code
and everyone else in the world had it anyway
– changed during 2000, but there are still restrictions
• does the government have the right/duty ...
– to control cryptographic algorithms and programs?
– to require trapdoors, key escrow, or similar mechanisms?
– to prevent reverse-engineering of cryptographic devices?
– to prevent research in cryptographic techniques?
• do corporations have the right ...
– to prevent publication of cryptographic techniques?
– to prevent reverse-engineering of cryptographic devices?
• how do we balance individual rights, property rights,
& societal rights?
Summary of crypto
• secret/symmetric key algorithms: DES, AES
– key distribution problem: everyone has to have the key
• public key algorithms: RSA, ...
– solves key distribution problem, but authentication is still important
– also permits digital signatures
– much slower than secret key, so used mainly for key exchange
• security is entirely in the key
– “security by obscurity” does not work: bad guys know everything
– brute force attacks work if keys are too short or easy
• good cryptography is hard
– you can't invent your own methods
– you can't trust “secret” or proprietary methods
• people are the weak link
– complicated or awkward systems will be subverted, ignored or misused
– social engineering attacks are effective
ignorance, incompetence, misguided helpfulness
• if all else fails, try bribery, burglary, blackmail, brutality

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