Cryptography

Instructor:
Dr.Maaz bin ahmad.
[email protected]

1
 Recall:
• Computer Security Concepts
– CIA Triad
• Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability
• The OSI Security Architecture
– X.800 Security Architecture
• Security Attack,
– Passive & Active Attacks
• Security Mechanism,
– Encipherment, Digital Signatures, Access Control etc
• Security Service
– Authentication, Access Control, Data Confidentiality etc

2
 Recall:
• Model for Security

3
 Symmetric Encryption
• or conventional / private-key / single-key
• sender and recipient share a common key
• all classical encryption algorithms are
private-key
• was only type prior to invention of public-
key in 1970’s
 Basic Terminology
• plaintext - the original message
• ciphertext - the coded message
• cipher - algorithm for transforming plaintext to ciphertext
• key - info used in cipher known only to sender/receiver
• encipher (encrypt) - converting plaintext to ciphertext
• decipher (decrypt) - recovering ciphertext from plaintext
• cryptography - study of encryption principles/methods
• cryptanalysis (codebreaking) - the study of principles/
methods of deciphering ciphertext without knowing key
• cryptology - the field of both cryptography and cryptanalysis
Symmetric Cipher Model
A Model of Symmetric Cryptosystem

7
 Requirements
• two requirements for secure use of
symmetric encryption:
– a strong encryption algorithm
– a secret key known only to sender / receiver
Y = EK(X)
X = DK(Y)
• assume encryption algorithm is known
• implies a secure channel to distribute key
 Cryptography
• can characterize by:
– type of encryption operations used
• substitution / transposition / product
– number of keys used
• single-key or private / two-key or public
– way in which plaintext is processed
• block / stream
 Cryptanalysis & Brute Force
• Cryptanalysis Attack
– Exploits the characteristics of algorithm to
attempt to deduce a specific plaintext or to
deduce the key being used.
• Brute Force Attack
– Attacker tries every possible key on a piece of
cipher text until an intelligible translation into
plaintext is obtained.

10
 Types of Cryptanalytic Attacks
• ciphertext only
– only know algorithm / ciphertext, statistical, can identify
plaintext
• known plaintext
– know/suspect plaintext & ciphertext to attack cipher
• chosen plaintext
– select plaintext and obtain ciphertext to attack cipher
• chosen ciphertext
– select ciphertext and obtain plaintext to attack cipher
• chosen text
– select either plaintext or ciphertext to en/decrypt to attack
cipher
 Brute Force Search
• always possible to simply try every key
• most basic attack, proportional to key size
• assume either know / recognise plaintext
 More Definitions
• unconditional security
– no matter how much computer power is
available, the cipher cannot be broken since the
ciphertext provides insufficient information to
uniquely determine the corresponding plaintext
• computational security
– given limited computing resources (eg time
needed for calculations is greater than age of
universe), the cipher cannot be broken
 Classical Substitution Ciphers
• where letters of plaintext are replaced by
other letters or by numbers or symbols
• or if plaintext is viewed as a sequence of
bits, then substitution involves replacing
plaintext bit patterns with ciphertext bit
patterns
 Different Substitution Ciphers
• Caesar Cipher
• Mono Alphabetic Cipher
• Polyalphabetic Cipher
• One Time Pad Cipher
• Hill Cipher
• Playfair Cipher
 Caesar Cipher
• earliest known substitution cipher
• by Julius Caesar
• first attested use in military affairs
• replaces each letter by 3rd letter on
• example:
meet me after the toga party
PHHW PH DIWHU WKH WRJD SDUWB
 Caesar Cipher
• can define transformation as:
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A B C

• mathematically give each letter a number

a b c d e f g h i j k l m
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
n o p q r s t u v w x y Z
13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

• then have Caesar cipher as:

C = E(p) = (p + k) mod (26)
p = D(C) = (C – k) mod (26)
 Cryptanalysis of Caesar Cipher
• only have 26 possible ciphers
– A maps to A,B,..Z
• could simply try each in turn
• a brute force search
• given ciphertext, just try all shifts of letters
• do need to recognize when have plaintext
• eg. break ciphertext "GCUA VQ DTGCM"
 Monoalphabetic Cipher
• rather than just shifting the alphabet
• could shuffle (jumble) the letters arbitrarily
• each plaintext letter maps to a different random
ciphertext letter
• hence key is 26 letters long

Plain: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Cipher: DKVQFIBJWPESCXHTMYAUOLRGZN
Plaintext: ifwewishtoreplaceletters
Ciphertext: WIRFRWAJUHYFTSDVFSFUUFYA
 Monoalphabetic Cipher Security
• now have a total of 26! = 4 x 1026 keys
• with so many keys, might think is secure
• but would be !!!WRONG!!!
• problem is language characteristics
 Language Redundancy and
Cryptanalysis
• human languages are redundant
. letters are not equally commonly used
• in English e is by far the most common letter
• then T,R,N,I,O,A,S
• other letters are fairly rare
• cf. Z,J,K,Q,X
• have tables of single, double & triple letter
frequencies
English Letter Frequencies
 Use in Cryptanalysis
• key concept - monoalphabetic substitution ciphers do
not change relative letter frequencies
• discovered by Arabian scientists in 9th century
• calculate letter frequencies for ciphertext
• compare counts/plots against known values
• for monoalphabetic must identify each letter
– tables of common double/triple letters help
 Example Cryptanalysis
• given ciphertext:
UZQSOVUOHXMOPVGPOZPEVSGZWSZOPFPESXUDBMETSXAIZ
VUEPHZHMDZSHZOWSFPAPPDTSVPQUZWYMXUZUHSX
EPYEPOPDZSZUFPOMBZWPFUPZHMDJUDTMOHMQ
• count relative letter frequencies (see text)
• guess P & Z are e and t
• guess ZW is th and hence ZWP is the
• proceeding with trial and error fially get:
it was disclosed yesterday that several informal but
direct contacts have been made with political
representatives of the viet cong in moscow
 Polyalphabetic Ciphers
• another approach to improving security is to use
multiple cipher alphabets
• called polyalphabetic substitution ciphers
• makes cryptanalysis harder with more alphabets to
guess and flatter frequency distribution
• use a key to select which alphabet is used for each
letter of the message
• use each alphabet in turn
• repeat from start after end of key is reached
 Vigenère Cipher
• simplest polyalphabetic substitution cipher
is the Vigenère Cipher
• effectively multiple caesar ciphers
• key is multiple letters long K = k1 k2 ... kd
• ith letter specifies ith alphabet to use
• use each alphabet in turn
• repeat from start after d letters in message
• decryption simply works in reverse
 Example
• write the plaintext out
• write the keyword repeated above it
• use each key letter as a caesar cipher key
• encrypt the corresponding plaintext letter
• eg using keyword deceptive
key: deceptivedeceptivedeceptive
plaintext: wearediscoveredsaveyourself
ciphertext:ZICVTWQNGRZGVTWAVZHCQYGLMGJ
 Security of Vigenère Ciphers
• have multiple ciphertext letters for each
plaintext letter
• hence letter frequencies are obscured

• start with letter frequencies

– see if look monoalphabetic or not
• if not, then need to determine number of
alphabets, since then can attach each
 Autokey Cipher
• ideally want a key as long as the message
• Vigenère proposed the autokey cipher
• with keyword is prefixed to message as key
• knowing keyword can recover the first few letters
• use these in turn on the rest of the message
• but still have frequency characteristics to attack
• eg. given key deceptive
key: deceptivewearediscoveredsav
plaintext: wearediscoveredsaveyourself
ciphertext:ZICVTWQNGKZEIIGASXSTSLVVWLA
 One-Time Pad
• if a truly random key as long as the message
is used, the cipher will be secure
• called a One-Time pad
• is unbreakable since ciphertext bears no
statistical relationship to the plaintext
• since for any plaintext & any ciphertext
there exists a key mapping one to other
• can only use the key once though
• have problem of safe distribution of key