UNIT I

INTRODUCTION TO SECURITY
UNIT I INTRODUCTION TO SECURITY
Computer Security Concepts – The OSI Security Architecture – Security
Attacks – Security Services and Mechanisms – A Model for Network Security –
Classical encryption techniques: Substitution techniques, Transposition
techniques, Steganography – Foundations of modern cryptography: Perfect
security – Information Theory – Product Cryptosystem – Cryptanalysis.
1.1 Computer Security Concepts
The NIST Computer Security Handbook [NIST95] defines the term computer
security as the protection afforded to an automated information system in order
to attain the applicable objectives of preserving the integrity, availability and
confidentiality of information system resources (includes hardware, software,
firmware, information/data, and telecommunications).
This definition introduces three key objectives that are at the heart of computer
security.
Key Security Concepts

These three concepts form what is often referred to as the CIA triad.
Confidentiality (covers both data confidentiality and privacy): preserving
authorized restrictions on information access and disclosure
Integrity (covers both data and system integrity): Guarding against improper
information modification or destruction
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Availability: Ensuring timely and reliable access to and use of information.
Although the use of the CIA triad to define security objectives is well
established, some in the security field feel that additional concepts are needed to
present a complete picture. Two of the most commonly mentioned are:
Authenticity: The property of being genuine and being able to be verified and
trusted
Accountability: The security goal that generates the requirement for actions of
an entity to be traced uniquely to that entity.
Example Applications
We can define three levels of impact
Low: The loss could be expected to have a limited adverse effect on
organizational operations, organizational assets, or individuals.
For example, the loss might
 result in minor damage to organizational assets;
 result in minor financial loss;
Moderate: The loss could be expected to have a serious adverse effect on
organizational operations, organizational assets, or individuals. \
For example, the loss might
 result in significant damage to organizational assets;
 result in significant financial loss
High: The loss could be expected to have a severe or catastrophic adverse effect
on organizational operations, organizational assets, or individuals.
For example, the loss might
 result in major damage to organizational assets;
 result in major financial loss;
We now provide some examples of applications that illustrate the requirements
just enumerated.
 Confidentiality - Student grade information is an asset whose
confidentiality is considered to be highly important by students.

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  Integrity – Consider a hospital patient's allergy information stored in a
database. The doctor should be able to trust that the information is correct
and current.
 Availability - Consider a system that provides authentication services for
critical systems, applications, and devices. An interruption of service
results in the inability for customers to access computing resources and
staff to access the resources they need to perform critical tasks.
Challenges
1. not simple – easy to get it wrong
2. must consider potential attacks
3. procedures used counter-intuitive
4. involve algorithms and secret info
5. must decide where to deploy mechanisms
6. battle of wits between attacker / admin
7. not perceived to be of benefit until it fails
8. requires regular monitoring

Important Terminologies
Plain text: An original message is known as the plaintext.
Cipher text: The coded message is called the cipher text.
Encryption: The process of converting from plaintext to cipher text is known
as enciphering or encryption.
Decryption: The process of converting from cipher text in to plain text is
known as deciphering or decryption.
Cryptography The many schemes used for encryption constitute the area of
study known as cryptography. Such a scheme is known as a cryptographic
system or a cipher.
Cryptanalysis: Techniques used for deciphering a message without any
knowledge of the enciphering details fall into the area of cryptanalysis.
Cryptanalysis is what the layperson calls “breaking the code.”

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Cryptology: The areas of cryptography and cryptanalysis together are called
cryptology.

1.2 OSI SECURITY ARCHITECTURE

ITU-T Recommendation X.800, Security Architecture for OSI, defines a
systematic approach for organizing the task of providing security.
The OSI security architecture focuses on security attacks, mechanisms, and
services. These can be defined briefly as follows:
Security attack – Any action that compromises the security of information
owned by an organization
Security mechanism – A mechanism that is designed to detect, prevent or
recover from a security attack
Security service – A service that enhances the security of the data processing
systems and the information transfers of an organization.
SECURITY ATTACK
There are two types of attacks
 Passive attacks
 Active attacks
Passive attack
Passive attacks attempt to learn or make use of information from the
system but do not affect system resources. The goal of the opponent is to obtain
information that is being transmitted.

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Passive attacks are of two types
 Release of message contents
 Traffic analysis:

Release of message contents: The opponent would learn the contents of the
transmission. A telephone conversation, an e-mail message and a transferred file
may contain sensitive or confidential information. We would like to prevent the
opponent from learning the contents of these transmissions.

Traffic analysis: The opponent could determine the location and identity of
communicating hosts and could observe the frequency and length of messages
being exchanged. This information might be useful in guessing the nature of the
communication that was taking place. Passive attacks are very difficult to detect,
because they do not involve any alteration of the data. However, it is feasible to
prevent the success of these attacks.

Active attacks
These attacks involve some modification of the data stream or the creation of a
false stream.

Active attacks can be classified in to four categories:

Masquerade – One entity pretends to be a different entity. Here, the attacker
capturers the authentication and acts as the sender.

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Replay – The attacker captures the message and retransmits the message
without modification to produce unauthorized effect.

Modification of messages – The attacker captures the message and retransmits

the message with modification to produce unauthorized effect.

Denial of service – The attacker may suppress all messages directed to a

particular destination. Another form of service denial is the disruption of an

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entire network, either by disabling the network or by overloading it with
messages so as to degrade performance.
It is quite difficult to prevent active attacks absolutely, because to do so
would require physical protection of all communication facilities and paths at
all times. Instead, the goal is to detect them and to recover from any disruption
or delays caused by them.
SECURITY SERVICES
X.800 defines a security service as a service that is provided by a protocol layer
of communicating open systems and that ensures adequate security of the
systems or of data transfers.
The classification of security services are as follows:

(i) Authentication: The authentication service is concerned with assuring that a

communication is authentic.
Two specific authentication services are defined in X.800:
 Peer entity authentication: Provide confidence in the identity of entities
connected.
 Data origin authentication: Provide assurance that the source of
received data is as claimed.
(ii) Access control: Access control is the ability to limit and control the access
to host systems and applications.
(iii) Data Confidentiality: Confidentiality is the protection of transmitted data
from passive attacks.
 Connection Confidentiality
The protection of all user data on a connection
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  Connectionless Confidentiality
The protection of all user data in a single data block
 Selective-Field Confidentiality
The confidentiality of selected fields within the user data on a connection
or in a single data block
 Traffic-Flow Confidentiality
The protection of the information that might be derived from observation
of traffic flows
(iv)Data Integrity: The assurance that data received are exactly as sent by an
authorized entity.
 Connection Integrity with Recovery
Provides for the integrity of all user data on a connection and detects any
modification, insertion, deletion, or replay of any data within an entire
data sequence, with recovery attempted.
 Connection Integrity without Recovery
As above, but provides only detection without recovery.
 Selective-Field Connection Integrity
Provides for the integrity of selected fields within the user data of a data
block transferred over a connection and takes the form of determination
of whether the selected fields have been modified, inserted, deleted, or
replayed.
 Connectionless Integrity
Provides for the integrity of a single connectionless data block and may
take the form of detection of data modification. Additionally, a limited
form of replay detection may be provided.
 Selective-Field Connectionless Integrity
Provides for the integrity of selected fields within a single connectionless
data block; takes the form of determination of whether the selected
fields have been modified.

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(v)Non repudiation: Provides protection against denial by one of the entities
involved in a communication of having participated in all or part of the
communication.
 Nonrepudiation, Origin
Proof that the message was sent by the specified party
 Nonrepudiation, Destination
Proof that the message was received by the specified party
SECURITY MECHANISMS
Specific security mechanisms: May be incorporated into the appropriate
protocol layer in order to provide some of the OSI security services.
 Encipherment:
It uses mathematical algorithm
to transform data into a form that is not readily intelligible. It depends
upon encryption algorithm and key
 Digital signature:
Data appended to or a cryptographic transformation of a data unit that is
to prove integrity of data unit and prevents from forgery
 Access control
A variety of mechanisms that enforce access rights to resources.
 Data integrity
A variety of mechanism are used to ensure integrity of data unit
 Traffic padding
The insertion of bits into gaps in a data stream to frustrate traffic analysis
attempts.
 Notarization
The use of a trusted third party to assure certain properties of a data
exchange
Pervasive Security Mechanisms:
Mechanisms that are not specific to any particular OSI security service or
protocol layer.

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  Trusted Functionality That which is perceived to be correct with respect
to some criteria (e.g., as established by a security policy).
 Security Label The marking bound to a resource (which may be a data
unit) that names or designates the security attributes of that resource.
 Event Detection Detection of security-relevant events.
 Security Audit Trail Data collected and potentially used to facilitate a
security audit, which is an independent review and examination of system
records and activities.
 Security Recovery Deals with requests from mechanisms, such as event
handling and management functions, and takes recovery actions.

1.3 A MODEL FOR NETWORK SECURITY

Encryption/Decryption methods fall into two categories.

 Symmetric key
 Public key

In symmetric key algorithms, the encryption and decryption keys are known
both to sender and receiver. The encryption key is shared and the decryption
key is easily calculated from it.

In many cases, the encryption and decryption keys are the same. In public key
cryptography, encryption key is made public, but it is computationally
infeasible to find the decryption key without the information known to the
receiver.

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A message is to be transferred from one party to another across some sort of
internet. The two parties, who are the principals in this transaction, must
cooperate for the exchange to take place. A logical information channel is
established by defining a route through the internet from source to destination
and by the cooperative use of communication protocols (e.g., TCP/IP) by the
two principals.
All the techniques for providing security have two components:
 A security-related transformation on the information to be sent. Examples
include the encryption of the message, which scrambles the message so
that it is unreadable by the opponent.
 Some secret information shared by the two principals and, it is hoped,
unknown to the opponent. An example is an encryption key used in
conjunction with the transformation to scramble the message before
transmission

A trusted third party may be needed to achieve secure transmission. For

example, a third party may be responsible for distributing the secret information
to the two principals while keeping it from any opponent.

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This general model shows that there are four basic tasks in designing a
particular security service:
1. Design an algorithm for performing the security-related transformation. The
algorithm should be such that an opponent cannot defeat its purpose.
2. Generate the secret information to be used with the algorithm.
3. Develop methods for the distribution and sharing of the secret information.
4. Specify a protocol to be used by the two principals that makes use of the
security algorithm and the secret information to achieve a particular security
service.
Network Access Security Model

1. Hacker: The one who is only interested in penetrating into your system.
They do not cause any harm to your system they only get satisfied by getting
access to your system.

2. Intruders: These attackers intend to do damage to your system or try to

obtain the information from the system which can be used to attain financial
gain.
The attacker can place a logical program on your system through the network
which can affect the software on your system.
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This leads to two kinds of risks:
a. Information threat: This kind of threats modifies data on the user’s behalf
to which actually user should not access. Like enabling some crucial permission
in the system.
b. Service threat: This kind of threat disables the user from accessing data on
the system.
Examples: Viruses and worms, spread using disks & inserted over network

 There are two ways to secure your system from attacker of which the first
is to introduce the gatekeeper function.
 Introducing gatekeeper function means introducing login-
id and passwords, which would keep away the unwanted access.
 In case the unwanted user gets access to the system the second way to
secure your system is introducing internal control which would detect
the unwanted user trying to access the system by analyzing system
activities.
 This second method we call as antivirus, which we install on our system
to prevent the unwanted user from accessing your computer system
through the internet.

1.4 CLASSICAL ENCRYPTION TECHNIQUES

Cryptographic systems are categorized based on the following points:
1. Type of operations used for transforming plaintext to ciphertext:
• Substitution Cipher: each element in the plaintext (bit, letter, group of
bits or letters) is mapped into another element
• Transposition Cipher: elements in the plaintext are rearranged
2. Number of keys are used:
• Symmetric encryption: if both sender and receiver use the same key, the
system is referred to as Symmetric encryption (single-key, secret-key, or
conventional encryption),

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 • Asymmetric encryption: if the sender and receiver use different keys,
the system is referred to as Asymmetric encryption (two-key, or public-key
encryption)
3. The way in which the plaintext is processed:
• A block cipher: takes a fixed length plaintext block and produces a
cipher text block of the same length.
• A stream cipher: encrypt data stream one bit or one byte at a time.
Symmetric Encryption
• It is the oldest and best-known encryption technique.
• In Symmetric encryption, both sender and receiver use the same key.
• It is also known as single-key encryption, secret-key or conventional
encryption.
Symmetric Cipher Model

Plaintext: is the cleartext (message) to be protected during transmission.

Ciphertext: is the encrypted version of the plaintext that generated by using
encryption algorithm.
Encryption algorithm: An algorithm that used to produce cipher text by using a
plaintext and secret key as inputs.
Decryption algorithm: An algorithm that done by reversing the encryption
algorithm.
Secret key: is the key that used in the cryptographic algorithm in order to
generate a ciphertext or compute the plaintext.
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There are two requirements for secure use of Symmetric encryption:
• Using a strong encryption algorithm
• A secret key known only to sender and receiver
Attacking an Encryption System
The objective of attacking an encryption system is to recover the key in use
rather
than simply to recover the plaintext of a single ciphertext.
There are two general approaches to attacking a conventional encryption
scheme:
• Cryptanalytic attacks
• Brute-force attack

1.5 SUBSTITUTION TECHNIQUES

 A substitution technique is one in which the letters of plaintext are
replaced by other letters or by numbers or symbols.
 Substitution ciphers can be categorized as either
i) Monoalphabetic ciphers or ii) polyalphabetic ciphers.
 In monoalphabetic substitution, the relationship between a symbol in the
plaintext to a symbol in the ciphertext is always one-to-one.
 In polyalphabetic substitution, each occurrence of a character may have a
different substitute. The relationship between a character in the plaintext to
a character in the ciphertext is one-to-many.
Various substitution ciphers are
(i) Caesar Cipher
(ii) Mono alphabetic cipher
(iii) Playfair cipher
(iv) Hill cipher
(v) Poly alphabetic cipher
(vi) Vignere cipher

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(i)CAESAR CIPHER (OR) SHIFT CIPHER
Caeser cipher was proposed by Julius Caesar. The Caesar cipher involves
replacing each letter of the alphabet with the letter standing 3 places further
down the alphabet.

Let us assign a numerical equivalent to each letter:

Note that the alphabet is wrapped around, so that letter following ‘z’ is ‘a’.
For each plaintext letter p, substitute the cipher text letter c such that
c = E(3, p) = (p+3) mod 26

Decryption is
p=D(3,c)=(c-3) mod 26

The general Caesar algorithm is

C = E(k, p) = (p + k) mod 26
where k takes on a value in the range 1 to 25.
The decryption algorithm is simply
p = D(k, c) = (C - k) mod 26

If it is known that a given cipher text is a Caesar cipher, then a brute-force

cryptanalysis is easily performed: simply try all the 25 possible keys.

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Cryptanalysis of Caesar Cipher
1. The encryption and decryption algorithms are known
2. There are only 25 possible keys. Hence brute force attack takes place
3. The language of the plaintext is known and easily recognizable
(ii) MONOALPHABETIC CIPHER
 Each plaintext letter maps to a different random cipher text letter
 Here, 26! Possible keys are used to eliminate brute force attack
There is, however, another line of attack. If the cryptanalyst knows the nature of
the plaintext (e.g., non-compressed English text), then the analyst can exploit
the regularities of the language.

As a first step, the relative frequency of the letters can be determined and
compared to a standard frequency distribution for English

Continued analysis of frequencies plus trial and error should easily yield a
solution.

(iii) PLAYFAIR CIPHER

The best known multiple letter encryption cipher is the playfair, which
treats digrams in the plaintext as single units and translates these units into
cipher text digrams. The playfair algorithm is based on the use of 5x5 matrix of
letters constructed using a keyword.
Let the keyword be “monarchy‟.
The matrix is constructed by

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  Filling in the letters of the keyword from left to right and from top
to bottom
 Duplicates are removed
 Remaining unfilled cells of the matrix is filled with remaining
alphabets in alphabetical order.
The matrix is 5x5. It can accommodate 25 alphabets. To accommodate the 26 th
alphabet I and J are counted as one character.

Rules for encryption

 Repeating plaintext letters that would fall in the same pair are separated
with a filler letter such as ‘x’.
 Two plaintext letters that fall in the same row of the matrix are each
replaced by the letter to the right, with the first element of the row
circularly following the last. For example, ar is encrypted as RM.
 Two plaintext letters that fall in the same column are each replaced by the
letter beneath, with the top element of the column circularly following the
last. For example, mu is encrypted as CM.
 Otherwise, each plaintext letter in a pair is replaced by the letter that lies
in its own row and the column occupied by the other plaintext letter. Thus,
hs becomes BP and ea becomes IM (or JM, as the encipherer wishes).
Example
Plain text: Balloon
Ba ll oo n
Ba lx lo on
BaI/JB
lxSU
loPM

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 onNA

Strength of playfair cipher

 Playfair cipher is a great advance over simple mono alphabetic ciphers.
 Since there are 26 letters, 26x26 = 676 diagrams are possible, so
identification of individual digram is more difficult.
 Frequency analysis is much more difficult.
Disadvantage
Easy to break because it has the structure and the resemblance of the plain text
language
(iv) HILL CIPHER
It is a multi-letter cipher. It is developed by Lester Hill. The encryption
algorithm takes m successive plaintext letters and substitutes for them m cipher
text letters. The substitution is determined by m linear equations in which each
character is assigned numerical value (a=0,b=1…z=25). For m =3 the system
can be described as follows:

C=KP mod 26
C and P are column vectors of length 3 representing the cipher and plain text
respectively.
Consider the message 'ACT', and

The key below (or GYBNQKURP in letters)

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Thus the enciphered vector is given by:

which corresponds to a ciphertext of 'POH’

Decryption

Decryption algorithm is done as P=K-1C mod 26

In order to decrypt, we turn the ciphertext back into a vector, then simply
multiply by the inverse matrix of the key matrix (IFKVIVVMI in letters).

Cipher text of 'POH'

Now gets us back the plain text 'ACT'

Merits and Demerits

 Completely hides single letter and 2 letter frequency information.
 Easily attacked with known plain text attack
(v)POLYALPHABETIC CIPHERS
Poly alphabetic cipher is a simple technique to improve mono-alphabetic
technique.
The features are
 A set of related mono-alphabetic substitution rules are used

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  A key determines which particular rule is chosen for a given
transformation.
Example: Vigenere Cipher

Each of the 26 ciphers is laid out horizontally, with the key letter for each
cipher to its left. A normal alphabet for the plaintext runs across the top. The
process of encryption is simple: Given a key letter x and a plaintext letter y, the
cipher text is at the intersection of the row labelled x and the column labelled y;
in this case, the cipher text is V. To encrypt a message, a key is needed that is as
long as the message.

Usually, the key is a repeating keyword.

Key=deceptive

Plain text= we are discovered save yourself

e.g., key = d e c e p t i v e d e c e p t i v e d e c e p t i v e

PT = w e a r e d i s c o v e r e d s a v e y o u r s e l f
CT = ZICVTWQNGRZGVTWAVZHCQYGLMGJ

Decryption is equally simple. The key letter again identifies the row. The
position of the cipher text letter in that row determines the column, and the
plaintext letter is at the top of that column.

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Strength of Vigenere cipher
 There are multiple ciphertext letters for each plaintext letter.
 Letter frequency information is obscured
(vi) VERNAM CIPHER or ONE-TIME PAD
It is an unbreakable cryptosystem. It represents the message as a sequence
of 0s and 1s. This can be accomplished by writing all numbers in binary, for
example, or by using ASCII. The key is a random sequence of 0‟s and 1‟s of
same length as the message. Once a key is used, it is discarded and never used
again.
The system can be expressed as follows:
Ci = Pi Ki
Ci - ith binary digit of cipher text Pi - ith binary digit of plaintext Ki - ith binary
digit of key
 – exclusive OR operation
Thus the cipher text is generated by performing the bitwise XOR of the
plaintext and the key. Decryption uses the same key. Because of the properties
of XOR, decryption simply involves the same bitwise operation:
Pi = Ci  Ki

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Advantages
 It is unbreakable since cipher text bears no statistical relationship to the
plaintext
 Not easy to break
Drawbacks
 Practically impossible to generate a random key as to the length of the
message
 The second problem is that of key distribution and key protection.
Due to the above two drawbacks, one time pad is of limited use and is used for
low band width channel which needs high security.

1.6 .TRANSPOSITION TECHNIQUES

A very different kind of mapping is achieved by performing some sort of
permutation on the plaintext letters. This technique is referred to as a
transposition cipher.

RAIL FENCE CIPHER

It is simplest of such cipher, in which the plaintext is written down as a
sequence of diagonals and then read off as a sequence of rows.
Plaintext = meet at the school house
To encipher this message with a rail fence of depth 2,
We write the message as follows:

m e a t e c o l o s
e t t h s h o h u e
The encrypted message Cipher text MEATECOLOSETTHSHOHUE
ROW TRANSPOSITION CIPHERS-
A more complex scheme is to write the message in a rectangle, row by row, and
read the message off, column by column, but permute the order of the columns.
The order of columns then becomes the key of the algorithm.

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e.g., plaintext = meet at the school house
Key = 4 3 1 2 5 6 7
PT = m e e t a t t
hes choo
l hous e
CT = ESOTCUEEHMHLAHSTOETO

Demerits
 Easily recognized because the frequency is same in both plain text and
cipher text.
 Can be made secure by performing more number of transpositions.

1.7 STEGANOGRAPHY
In Steganography, the plaintext is hidden. The existence of the message is
concealed. For example, the sequence of first letters of each word of the overall
message spells out the hidden message.
Various other techniques have been used historically; some examples are the
following:
• Character marking: Selected letters of printed or typewritten text are
overwritten in pencil. The marks are ordinarily not visible unless the paper is
held at an angle to bright light.
• Invisible ink: A number of substances can be used for writing but leave no
visible trace until heat or some chemical is applied to the paper.
• Pin punctures: Small pin punctures on selected letters are ordinarily not
visible unless the paper is held up in front of a light.
• Typewriter correction ribbon: Used between lines typed with a black ribbon,
the results of typing with the correction tape are visible only under a strong light.
Drawback
 It requires a lot of overhead to hide a relatively few bits of information.
 Once the system is discovered, it becomes virtually worthless

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1.8 Foundations of modern cryptography
 Modern cryptography is the cornerstone of computer and
communications security.
 Its foundation is based on various concepts of mathematics such as
number theory, computational-complexity theory, and probability theory.
Characteristics of Modern Cryptography
There are three major characteristics that separate modern cryptography from
the classical approach.
Classic Cryptography Modern Cryptography
It manipulates traditional It operates on binary bit sequences.
characters, i.e., letters and
digits directly.
It is mainly based on It relies on publicly known mathematical
‘security through algorithms for coding the information.
obscurity’. Secrecy is obtained through a secrete key
which is used as the seed for the
algorithms. The computational difficulty of
algorithms, absence of secret key, etc.,
It requires the entire Modern cryptography requires parties
cryptosystem for interested in secure communication to
communicating possess the secret key only.
confidentially.

1.9 PERFECT SECURITY

There are 3 common traits that we look for in a definition of security:
• The definition provides strong guarantees about the security of our
information
• The definition is achievable (there is some way to implement it)
• The definition is achievable in a practical, efficient way

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The first definition of security we saw was Shannon’s ”perfect security”: when
transmitting a message, any 3rd party eavesdropper will learn nothing about the
message (except its length) just from intercepting the cipher text.
Perfect Security
An encryption scheme π is perfectly secure if ∀m1, m2 ∈ M {k ← Gen c1 =
Enc(k,m1) :c1} = {k ← Gen c2 = Enc(k,m) : c2} (The first formula refers to the
distribution of all cipher texts c1 reached by randomly choosing k and
encrypting message m1, the second is the same but for m2)
So any two messages need to lead to the same distribution of cipher texts when
encrypted, or in other words ∀ cipher texts c, Pr(c1 = c) = Pr(c2 = c).
Another way of looking at this is that if you’re given a cipher text c and told
that it was either encrypted from m1 or m2, you shouldn’t be able to tell which
one.
Perfectly Secure Encryption Schemes
One time pad

M = K = {0, 1}n
 Gen is chosen uniformly at random from the key space
 E(m, k) = m ⊕ k
 D(c, k) = c ⊕ k
One time pad is perfectly secure.

1.10 INFORMATION THEORY

Information theory is a branch of science that deals with the analysis of a
communications system.

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One detail that makes communicating difficult is noise. Noise introduces
uncertainty. Suppose I wish to transmit one bit of information what are all of
the possibilities
tx 0, rx 0 - good
tx 0, rx 1 - error
tx 1, rx 0 - error
tx 1, rx 1 - good
Two of the cases above have errors – this is where probability fits into the
picture In the case of steganography, the noise may be due to attacks on the
hiding algorithm.
Claude Shannon introduced the idea of self-information.

Suppose we have an event X, where Xi represents a particular outcome

Consider flipping a fair coin, there are two equi probable outcomes: say
X0 = heads, P0 = 1/2, X1 = tails, P1 = 1/2
The amount of self-information for any single result is 1 bit. In other words, the
number of bits required to communicate the result of the event is 1 bit. When
outcomes are equally likely, there is a lot of information in the result.
Information-theoretic security
Information-theoretic security is a cryptosystem whose security derives purely
from information theory; the system cannot be broken even if the adversary has
unlimited computing power. The cryptosystem is considered cryptanalytically
unbreakable if the adversary does not have enough information to break the
encryption.
There are a variety of cryptographic tasks for which information-theoretic
security is a meaningful and useful requirement. A few of these are:

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1. Secret sharing schemes such as Shamir's are information-theoretically secure
(and also perfectly secure) in that having less than the requisite number of
shares of the secret provides no information about the secret.
2. More generally, secure multiparty computation protocols often have
information theoretic security.
3. Private information retrieval with multiple databases can be achieved with
information theoretic privacy for the user's query.
4. Symmetric encryption can be constructed under an information-theoretic
notion of security called entropic security, which assumes that the adversary
knows almost nothing about the message being sent. The goal here is to hide all
functions of the plaintext rather than all information about it.
5. Quantum cryptography is largely part of information-theoretic cryptography.
CRYPTOSYSTEMS
A cryptosystem is an implementation of cryptographic techniques and their
accompanying infrastructure to provide information security services. A
cryptosystem is also referred to as a cipher system.
1.11 Product Cryptosystem
Two of the first kinds of cryptosystems that we considered were simple
substitution ciphers and permutation ciphers. Each of them quickly proved
vulnerable to attack. We now consider a new kind of cryptosystem that is based
on them but which is considerably more difficult to attack; so difficult, in fact,
that most modern cryptosystems are of the type we now consider.

A product cryptosystem is a block cipher that repeatedly performs substitutions

and permutations, one after the other, to produce ciphertext.
Example : DES and AES
1.12 CRYPTANALSIS
The process of attempting to discover X(Plain Text) or Key or both is
known as cryptanalysis. The strategy used by the cryptanalysis depends on the

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nature of the encryption scheme and the information available to the
cryptanalyst.
There are various types of cryptanalytic attacks based on the amount of
information known to the cryptanalyst.
Cipher text only – A copy of cipher text alone is known to the cryptanalyst.

Known plaintext – The cryptanalyst has a copy of the cipher text and
the corresponding plaintext.

Chosen plaintext – The cryptanalysts gains temporary access to the encryption

machine. They cannot open it to find the key, however; they can encrypt a
large number of suitably chosen plaintexts and try to use the resulting cipher
texts to deduce the key.

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Chosen cipher text – The cryptanalyst obtains temporary access to the
decryption machine, uses it to decrypt several string of symbols, and tries to use
the results to deduce the key.

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