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Imc Shift-Cipher

The document introduces the Shift Cipher, a basic encryption method that shifts letters of the alphabet by a key value, and discusses its lack of security due to a limited key space of 26 possible keys. It also covers the Byte-wise Shift Cipher, which operates on bytes and uses XOR for encryption, but similarly suffers from vulnerability due to only having 256 possible keys. The document emphasizes the importance of having a sufficiently large key space to deter brute-force attacks in cryptographic design.

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Rasha Elsayed Sakr
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18 views17 pages

Imc Shift-Cipher

The document introduces the Shift Cipher, a basic encryption method that shifts letters of the alphabet by a key value, and discusses its lack of security due to a limited key space of 26 possible keys. It also covers the Byte-wise Shift Cipher, which operates on bytes and uses XOR for encryption, but similarly suffers from vulnerability due to only having 256 possible keys. The document emphasizes the importance of having a sufficiently large key space to deter brute-force attacks in cryptographic design.

Uploaded by

Rasha Elsayed Sakr
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 17

Introduction to Modern Cryptography

Michele Ciampi

(Slides courtesy of Prof. Jonathan Katz)

Lecture 01 Part 3

1 / 17
Shift Cipher

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The Shift Cipher

▶ Consider encrypting English text


▶ Associate a ← 0, b ← 1, ... z ← 25
▶ k ∈ K = {0, . . . , 25}
▶ To encrypt using key k, shift every letter of the plaintext
by k positions (with wraparound)
▶ Decryption just does the reverse

helloworldz
ccccccccccc
jgnnqyqtnfb

3 / 17
Modular arithmetic

▶ x = y mod N if and only if N divides x − y


▶ [x mod N ] = the remainder when x is divided by N
▶ i.e. the unique value y ∈ {0, . . . , N − 1} such that x = y
mod N
▶ 25 = 35 mod 10
▶ 25 ̸= [35 mod 10]
▶ 5 = [35 mod 10]

4 / 17
The Shift Cipher, formally

▶ M = strings over lowercase English alphabet


▶ Gen: choose uniform k ∈ {0, . . . , 25}
▶ Enck (m1 . . . mt ): output c1 . . . ct , where

ci = [mi + k mod 26]

▶ Deck (c1 . . . ct ): output m1 . . . mt , where

mi = [ci − k mod 26]

5 / 17
Is the Shift Cipher secure?

Brute-force Attack
▶ No – only 26 possible keys!
▶ Given a ciphertext, try decrypting with every possible key
▶ Only one possibility will “make sense”
▶ Example of a brute-force or exhaustive-search attack

6 / 17
Brute-force Attack on Shift Cipher

Example
▶ Ciphertext uryybjbeyq
▶ Try every possible key and decrypt:
▶ message under key 1 is: tqxxaiadxp
▶ message under key 2 is: spwwzhzcwo
▶ ...
▶ message under key i is: helloworld
▶ ...

7 / 17
Byte-wise Shift Cipher

▶ Alphabet of bytes rather than (English, lowercase) letters


▶ Works natively for arbitrary data!
▶ Use XOR instead of modular addition
▶ Essential properties still hold

8 / 17
Hexadecimal (base 16) Notation

Hex Bits Decimal Hex Bits Decimal


0 0000 0 8 1000 8
1 0001 1 9 1001 9
2 0010 2 A 1010 10
3 0011 3 B 1011 11
4 0100 4 C 1100 12
5 0101 5 D 1101 13
6 0110 6 E 1110 14
7 0111 7 F 1111 15

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Hexadecimal (base 16) Notation

0x10
▶ 0x10 = 16*1 + 0 = 16
▶ 0x10 = 0001 0000

0xAF
▶ 0xAF = 16*A + F = 16*10 + 15 = 175
▶ 0xAF = 1010 1111

10 / 17
ASCII

▶ American Standard Code for Information Interchange


▶ Character encoding standard
▶ Byte-wise Shift Cipher: encode characters in ASCII
▶ 1 byte = 1 character = 2 hex digits
▶ Encoded using the ASCII table

11 / 17
ASCII table

https://hubpages.com/technology/What-Are-ASCII-Codes
12 / 17
Useful observations

▶ Only 128 valid ASCII chars (128 bytes invalid)


▶ Only 0x20-0x7E printable
▶ 0x41-0x7A includes upper/lowercase letters
▶ Uppercase letters begin with 0x4 or 0x5
▶ Lowercase letters begin with 0x6 or 0x7

13 / 17
Byte-wise Shift Cipher, Formally

▶ M = strings of bytes
▶ Gen: choose uniform k ∈ K = {0x00 . . . 0xFF} i.e. there
are 256 possible keys
▶ Enck (m1 . . . mt ): output c1 . . . ct , where

ci = mi ⊕ k

▶ Deck (c1 . . . ct ): output m1 . . . mt , where

mi = ci ⊕ k

14 / 17
Is this scheme secure?

▶ No – only 256 possible keys!


▶ Given a ciphertext, try decrypting with every possible key
▶ If ciphertext is long enough, only one plaintext will ”make
sense”
▶ Can further optimize
▶ First nibble of plaintext likely 0x4,0x5,0x6,0x7 (assuming
letters only)
▶ Recover 2 key bits and reduce exhaustive search by a factor
of 4.

15 / 17
Sufficient key space principle

Crypto Design Lesson One


▶ The key space must be large enough to make brute-force
attacks impractical

Spoiler: necessary, but not sufficient

16 / 17
End

Reference: Section 1.3 of the book

17 / 17

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