Cryptography and

Network Security
Chapter 6
 Chapter 6 – Block Cipher
Operation
Many savages at the present day regard
their names as vital parts of themselves,
and therefore take great pains to conceal
their real names, lest these should give to
evil-disposed persons a handle by which
to injure their owners.
— The Golden Bough, Sir James George
Frazer
 Multiple Encryption & DES
 clear a replacement for DES was needed

theoretical attacks that can break it

demonstrated exhaustive key search attacks
 AES is a new cipher alternative
 prior to this alternative was to use multiple
encryption with DES implementations
 Triple-DES is the chosen form
 Double-DES?
 could use 2 DES encrypts on each block
 C = EK2(EK1(P))
 issue of reduction to single stage
 and have “meet-in-the-middle” attack

works whenever use a cipher twice
 since X = EK1(P) = DK2(C)

attack by encrypting P with all keys and store

then decrypt C with keys and match X value

can show takes O(256) steps
 Triple-DES with Two-Keys
 hence must use 3 encryptions

would seem to need 3 distinct keys
 but can use 2 keys with E-D-E sequence

C = EK1(DK2(EK1(P)))

nb encrypt & decrypt equivalent in security

if K1=K2 then can work with single DES
 standardized in ANSI X9.17 & ISO8732
 no current known practical attacks

several proposed impractical attacks might
become basis of future attacks
 Triple-DES with Three-Keys
 although are no practical attacks on two-
key Triple-DES have some indications
 can use Triple-DES with Three-Keys to
avoid even these
 C = EK3(DK2(EK1(P)))
 has been adopted by some Internet
applications, eg PGP, S/MIME
 Modes of Operation
 block ciphers encrypt fixed size blocks

eg. DES encrypts 64-bit blocks with 56-bit key
 need some way to en/decrypt arbitrary
amounts of data in practise
 NIST SP 800-38A defines 5 modes
 have block and stream modes
 to cover a wide variety of applications
 can be used with any block cipher
Electronic Codebook Book (ECB)
 message is broken into independent
blocks which are encrypted
 each block is a value which is substituted,
like a codebook, hence name
 each block is encoded independently of
the other blocks
Ci = EK(Pi)
 uses: secure transmission of single values
Electronic
Codebook
Book
(ECB)
 Advantages and Limitations of
ECB
 message repetitions may show in ciphertext

if aligned with message block

particularly with data such graphics

or with messages that change very little, which
become a code-book analysis problem
 weakness is due to the encrypted message
blocks being independent
 main use is sending a few blocks of data
Cipher Block Chaining (CBC)
 message is broken into blocks
 linked together in encryption operation
 each previous cipher blocks is chained
with current plaintext block, hence name
 use Initial Vector (IV) to start process
Ci = EK(Pi XOR Ci-1)
C-1 = IV
 uses: bulk data encryption, authentication
 Cipher
Block
Chaining
(CBC)
 Message Padding
 at end of message must handle a possible
last short block

which is not as large as blocksize of cipher

pad either with known non-data value (eg nulls)

or pad last block along with count of pad size
• eg. [ b1 b2 b3 0 0 0 0 5]
• means have 3 data bytes, then 5 bytes pad+count

this may require an extra entire block over
those in message
 there are other, more esoteric modes,
which avoid the need for an extra block
 Advantages and Limitations of
CBC
 a ciphertext block depends on all blocks
before it
 any change to a block affects all following
ciphertext blocks
 need Initialization Vector (IV)

which must be known to sender & receiver

if sent in clear, attacker can change bits of first block,
and change IV to compensate

hence IV must either be a fixed value (as in EFTPOS)

or must be sent encrypted in ECB mode before rest of
message
 Stream Modes of Operation
 block modes encrypt entire block
 may need to operate on smaller units

real time data
 convert block cipher into stream cipher

cipher feedback (CFB) mode

output feedback (OFB) mode

counter (CTR) mode
 use block cipher as some form of pseudo-
random number generator
 Cipher FeedBack (CFB)
 message is treated as a stream of bits
 added to the output of the block cipher
 result is feed back for next stage (hence name)
 standard allows any number of bit (1,8, 64 or
128 etc) to be feed back

denoted CFB-1, CFB-8, CFB-64, CFB-128 etc
 most efficient to use all bits in block (64 or 128)
Ci = Pi XOR EK(Ci-1)
C-1 = IV
 uses: stream data encryption, authentication
 s-bit
Cipher
FeedBack
(CFB-s)
 Advantages and Limitations of
CFB
 appropriate when data arrives in bits/bytes
 most common stream mode
 limitation is need to stall while do block
encryption after every n-bits
 note that the block cipher is used in
encryption mode at both ends
 errors propogate for several blocks after
the error
 Output FeedBack (OFB)
 message is treated as a stream of bits
 output of cipher is added to message
 output is then feed back (hence name)
 feedback is independent of message
 can be computed in advance
Oi = EK(Oi-1)
Ci = Pi XOR Oi
O-1 = IV
 uses: stream encryption on noisy channels
 Output
FeedBack
(OFB)
 Advantages and Limitations of
OFB
 needs an IV which is unique for each use

if ever reuse attacker can recover outputs
 bit errors do not propagate
 more vulnerable to message stream modification
 sender & receiver must remain in sync
 only use with full block feedback

subsequent research has shown that only full block
feedback (ie CFB-64 or CFB-128) should ever be
used
 Counter (CTR)
 a “new” mode, though proposed early on
 similar to OFB but encrypts counter value
rather than any feedback value
 must have a different key & counter value
for every plaintext block (never reused)
Oi = EK(i)
Ci = Pi XOR Oi
 uses: high-speed network encryptions
Counter
(CTR)
 Advantages and Limitations of
CTR
 efficiency

can do parallel encryptions in h/w or s/w

can preprocess in advance of need

good for bursty high speed links
 random access to encrypted data blocks
 provable security (good as other modes)
 but must ensure never reuse key/counter
values, otherwise could break (cf OFB)
Feedback
Character-
istics
 Summary
 Multiple Encryption & Triple-DES
 Modes of Operation

ECB, CBC, CFB, OFB, CTR