Data Privacy and Security
Data Privacy and Security
Springer
New York
Berlin
Heidelberg
Hong Kong
London
Milan
Paris
Tokyo
David Salomon
,~,
T
Springer
David Salomon
Department of Computer Science
California State University, Northridge
Northridge, CA 91330-8281
USA
[email protected]
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 SPIN 10906224
www.springer-ny.com
One of the earliest computers, the Colossus, was built in England during World
War II for the specific purpose of deciphering German military codes. Early in the
war, the German military used the Enigma machine to encrypt messages. The story
of the Enigma and how its code was broken is told in Chapter 5. Later in the war,
the British discovered that the Germans had started using another cipher, dubbed
the Lorenz, that was far more complex than the Enigma. Breaking the Lorenz code
required a sophisticated machine, a machine that could perform statistical analyses,
data searching, and string matching, and that could easily be reconfigured to perform
different operations as needed. Max Newman, one of the mathematicians employed
in Bletchley Park on breaking the Enigma code, came up with a design for such a
machine, but his superiors were convinced that constructing it, especially during the
war, was beyond their capabilities.
Fortunately, an engineer by the name of Tommy Flowers had heard about the
idea and believed that it was workable. He worked for the British Post Office in North
London, where he managed to convert Newman's design into a working machine in
10 months. He finished the construction and delivered his machine to Bletchley Park
in December 1943. It was called Colossus, and it had two important features; it was
completely electronic, using 1500 vacuum tubes and no mechanical relays, and it was
programmable. It used paper tapes for input and output. Today, the Colossus is one
of several candidates for the title "the first modern electronic computer," but for a
long time it was kept secret.
After the war, Colossus was dismantled, and its original blueprints destroyed by
Flowers obeying government instructions. This is why for many years, others were
credited with the invention of the modern computer.
a bit of work. The rest tempt the reader to try to come up with a new idea or a novel
principle. It is important to try to work out the exercises, but the answers are provided
and can always be consulted as a last resort.
• The Introduction tells the story of the Zimmermann telegram to illustrate the effect
secret codes and code breaking can have on important historical events. The main terms
used in this field, such as cryptography, cryptanalysis, and steganography, are defined.
The Introduction continues with a discussion of Kerckhoffs' principle which claims that
the important part of a secret code is not the encryption algorithm but the cryptographic
key. The Introduction concludes with a list of important cryptographic resources.
• Chapter 1 discusses monoalphabetic substitution ciphers, where each symbol is
replaced by another symbol and the replacement (SUbstitution) rule does not vary.
Section 1.2 illustrates how a knowledge of the letter frequencies of a language can be used
to break a monoalphabetic cipher. Section 1.4 discusses the Polybius monoalphabetic
cipher, Section 1.6 explains the Playfair cipher, and Section 1. 7 introduces homophonic
substitution ciphers.
• Chapter 2 is devoted to transposition ciphers. Such a cipher replaces the entire
alphabet with a permutation of itself. The topics covered in this chapter are transposi-
tion by turning template (Section 2.3), transposition with a key (Section 2.4), and the
two-step ADFGVX cipher (Section 2.6).
• Polyalphabetic substitution ciphers are the topic of Chapter 3. In such a cipher,
the substitution rule is varied each time a character is encrypted. The main encryption
methods covered in this chapter are the Trithemius cipher (Section 3.4), the Vigenere
cipher (Section 3.5) and how it was broken, the index of coincidence (Section 3.17), and
Polybius's polyalphabetic cipher (Section 3.16).
• A polyalphabetic substitution cipher can be made absolutely secure through the
use of a one-time pad based on random numbers, so Chapter 4 is a survey of random
numbers, methods for generating both true and pseudo-random numbers, and statistical
tests for randomness.
• The last word in encryption, before the computer age, was mechanical (or elec-
tromechanical) rotor encryption machines. Chapter 5 is devoted to these machines,
specifically to the most famous of them, the German Enigma. The principles of rotor
machines are explained, followed by a discussion of the Enigma, its history, principles
of operation, and how its code was broken before and during World War II.
• Chapters 6, 7, and 8 discuss modern cryptography. Both symmetric-key and public-
key encryption methods are discussed, with emphasis on block ciphers and stream ci-
phers.
• Does the future belong to quantum cryptography? This question is the topic of
Chapter 9, where the principles of this esoteric field are explained.
x Preface
Consumer electronics maker JVC and games developer Hudson Soft say they've
found a way to fight CD-ROM software piracy.
The companies said Wednesday they've developed a new anti-copying technology,
called "Root," that they claim will prevent CD-ROM discs from being duplicated.
The technology is just one part of the computer industry's ongoing efforts to control
software piracy.
The Root technology-which prevents illegal copying "from the roots up," the
company says-uses encryption keys, an established method of protecting data. The
technology encrypts a disc's contents so it cannot be read without a key, which is
also located on the disc. The key is hidden in such a way that it can be read by
any CD-ROM drive, but cannot be written by a CD-RjRW drive-so that a copied
version of the disc would be unreadable. The key is different for each disc and is
hidden in a different place each time.
From Cnet news.com August 29, 2002, 4:01 PM PT