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Course Title-Computer Security COURSE CODE-cosc4171 Group Assignment

This document contains information about a computer security course including the course title, code, and names of group members. It also provides information on encryption and decryption including plaintext, ciphertext, encryption and decryption processes using keys, keyless ciphers, and examples of the Caesar cipher. Using the Caesar cipher as an example, the document decodes a ciphertext message by shifting each letter by 3 positions in the alphabet to reveal the original plaintext message.

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Yohannes Busho
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54 views

Course Title-Computer Security COURSE CODE-cosc4171 Group Assignment

This document contains information about a computer security course including the course title, code, and names of group members. It also provides information on encryption and decryption including plaintext, ciphertext, encryption and decryption processes using keys, keyless ciphers, and examples of the Caesar cipher. Using the Caesar cipher as an example, the document decodes a ciphertext message by shifting each letter by 3 positions in the alphabet to reveal the original plaintext message.

Uploaded by

Yohannes Busho
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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COURSE TITLE- COMPUTER SECURITY

COURSE CODE-cosc4171
GROUP ASSIGNMENT

Section C1

GROUP MEMBERS NAME ID NUMBER


YOHANNES BUSHO 0900786
FIKADE TILAHUN 0900610
FIRDEWS FENTAW 0900612
MIFTAH MUFTI 0900708
FENTALEM MULE 0900607
Q1. suppose you are given the following cipher text message and you are required to try to determine the
original plain text wklv phvvdjh lv qrw wrr kdug wr euhdn
the message has actually been enciphered with a 27-symbol alphabet A through Z plus the blank
character separator between words. As start assume that the coder was lazy and has allowed the blank
translated to be itself.(hint: exploit the relative frequency of English Letter diagram trigram and other
pattern to do the decryption)

Encryption and Decryption

– Encryption: a process of encoding a message so that its meaning is


Not obvious
– Decryption: the reverse process
• encode (encipher) vs. decode (decipher)
– encoding: the process of translating entire words or phrases to
Other words or phrases
– enciphering: translating letters or symbols individually
– Encryption: the group term that covers both encoding and
Enciphering

Plaintext vs. Cipher text

– P(plaintext): the original form of a message


– C(cipher text): the encrypted form
• Basic operations
– plaintext to cipher text: encryption: C = E(P)
– cipher text to plaintext: decryption: P = D(C)
– Requirement: P = D(E(P))

• Encryption with key


– Encryption key: KE
– Decryption key: KD

1
– C = E(KE, P)
– P = D(KD, E(KE, P))
• Keyless Cipher
– a cipher that does not require the use of a key
• Key cannot be changed
If the encryption algorithm should fall into the interceptor’s hands, future messages can still be kept secret
because the interceptor will not know the key value
Breakable encryption
An encryption algorithm may be breakable, meaning that given enough time and data, an analyst could
determine the algorithm
 Practicality is an issue

For a given cipher scheme, there may be 1030 possible decipherments, so the task is to select the
right one out of the 1030

Cryptanalyst cannot be expected to try just the hard, long way
– Another efficient algorithm may exist
• Estimates of breakability are based on current technology
– Budget dependent

Representation of characters

Encoding

Modular arithmetic
• Y + 3 = B (24 + 3 = 27 º 1 mod 26)
• Two forms of encryption
– Substitution: one letter is exchanged for another
– Transposition: the order of the letters is rearranged

Simple substitution
– use a correspondence table
• substitute each character by another character or symbol
2
– Monoalphabetic cipher
• One-by-one

Named for Julious Caesar

– Caesar used a shift of 3


Ci=E(Pi)=(Pi+3)mod 26
– Translation chart

E (TREATY IMPOSSIBLE) = wuhdwb lpsrvvleoh


• E(T) = w, E(R)=u, etc.
Advantages and Disadvantages of the Caesar Cipher
Advantage
• easy to use
Disadvantage
• Simple structure
• Easy to break
So, to change our given cipher text wkLv phvvdjh lv qrw wrr kdug wr euhdn to corresponding plain text
We follow
w k L v p h v v d j h l v q r w w r r k d u g w r e u h d n
T H I S M E S S A G E I S N O T T O O H A R D T O B R E A K
So, the original plain text of the cipher text wkLv phvvdjh lv qrw wrr kdug wr euhdn is
“THIS MESSAGE IS NOT TOO HARD TO BREAK”

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