Transposition ciphers • If row is fixed, column can vary

• Text is written column by column, send row by row

• Changes the location of the symbols • If column is fixed, row can vary
• E.g., symbol in first position -> in tenth position, • Text is written row by row, send column by column
symbol in eighth position -> first position

• Keyless Transposition ciphers: ‘rail fence cipher’ Number of rows = 2 (fixed),

Number of columns = ceil (length of plaintext / 2)
• Text is written column by column into a table
• Text is transmitted row by row by the sender
• E.g., plaintext = “meet me at the park” m e m a t e a k
ciphertext = “MEMATEAKETETHPR” e t e t h p r
• To decrypt, the receiver divides the ciphertext in half
(since number of rows = 2 is fixed in rail fence cipher)
• First half -> first row, Second half -> second row
• Then, the receiver reads the received ciphertext in
zigzag.
Reading in zigzag
• Cryptanalysis
• If an attacker knows rail fence cipher is used, it can be
broken -> # of rows is fixed, no keys!
Transposition ciphers
• Keyless Transposition ciphers (cont…)
• Plaintext written row by row
• Send column by column
• Sender and receiver agrees on the number of
columns Number of columns = x = 4 (e.g.),
• E.g., Number of rows = ceil (length of plaintext / x) = 4
• Plaintext = “meet me at the park”
• Ciphertext = “MMTAEEHREAEKTTP”
• To decrypt (reverse process)
• Arrange the received ciphertext column by
column
• Read it row by row

• If row is fixed, column can vary

• Text is written column by column, send row by row
• If column is fixed, row can vary
• Text is written row by row, send column by column
Transposition ciphers
• Keyed Transposition ciphers
• divide the plaintext into groups of predetermined size, called blocks
• use a key to permute the characters in each block separately
• Plaintext = “enemy attacks tonight” (insert a bogus character ‘z’ if plaintext is not multiple of block size)

Key for
permutation
Transposition ciphers: ‘Keyless + Keyed’ combination
• First, the text is written into a table row by row.
• Second, the permutation is done by reordering
the columns.
• Third, the new table is read column by column.
• Called keyed columnar transposition ciphers or
just columnar transposition ciphers.

• Sending part (column by column) is

what makes it different from the
previous slide
• Same permutation is applied across
all blocks (written on different rows)
Transposition ciphers: ‘Key’ in ‘Keyless + Keyed’ combination
• It is customary to create two keys (one for
encryption and one for decryption) instead of the
key mapping shown.
• Encryption and decryption key entry shows the
source column number. Destination column
number is understood from the index/position of
the entry.
• How do we get the decryption key from the
encryption key?
• Write index below the encryption key
• Swap the key with the index (key becomes
index and index becomes key)
• Sort the pairs (of key and index) based on
index

Index is 1, so 4 is moved to the first position

Do the same for the others..
Transposition ciphers: Cryptanalysis
• Statistical attack
• transposition cipher does not change the frequency of letters in the ciphertext.
• if the length of the ciphertext is long enough, vulnerable to statistical attack.
• Pattern attack
• The ciphertext created from a keyed transposition cipher has some repeated patterns.
• An attacker can guess the block size and permuting the characters in the group can give a clue.
• Brute force attack
• In keyed transposition cipher, the number of keys can be huge (1! + 2! + 3! + . . . + L!), where L is the length of
the ciphertext
• (1! + 2! + 3! + . . . + L!) ??

One column # of columns = length of ciphertext

Only one row

#of columns correspond to size of block to which the

plaintext is divided, i.e., # of columns = 2 means block
size is also 2.
Stream ciphers, Block ciphers

Ciphers

Stream ciphers Block ciphers

• Encryption and decryption are done one symbol at • group of plaintext symbols of size m (m > 1) are
a time encrypted together creating a group of ciphertext of
• We have a plaintext stream, a ciphertext stream, the same size
and a key stream

• E.g., Monoalphabetic ciphers (additive,

multiplicative, affine), Vigenere ciphers

• E.g., Hill ciphers

Modern (Symmetric-key) Block Ciphers
• Traditional symmetric-key ciphers that we have studied so far are character-oriented ciphers.
• We need bit-oriented ciphers. Why?
• information to be encrypted is not just text; it can also consist of numbers, graphics, audio, and video
data.
• convenient to convert these types of data into a stream of bits, to encrypt the stream, and then to send
the encrypted stream.
• at the bit level, each character is replaced by 8 (or 16) bits, which means that the number of symbols
becomes 8 (or 16) times larger.
• Mixing a larger number of symbols increases security.

• Symmetric-key modern block cipher encrypts an n-bit block of plaintext or decrypts an n-bit block of
ciphertext.
• Encryption or decryption algorithm uses a k-bit key.
• Decryption algorithm must be the inverse of the encryption algorithm
• Both operations must use the same secret key
• Padding must be added to make the block n-bit.
Modern (Symmetric-key) Block Ciphers
• How many padding bits must be added to a message of 100 characters if 8-bit ASCII is used for
encoding and the block cipher accepts blocks of 64 bits?
• 32 bits -> total of 832 bits or thirteen 64-bit blocks.

• Modern block ciphers are designed as substitution ciphers

• a 1-bit or a 0-bit in the plaintext can be replaced by either a 0 or a 1.
• plaintext and the ciphertext can have a different number of 1’s.

• What if they are designed as transposition cipher?

• bits are only reordered (transposed) -> there is the same number of 1’s in the plaintext and in
the ciphertext.
• preserving the number of 1’s or 0’s -> vulnerable to exhaustive-search attacks.

• What search? The transposition key

that maps the ciphertext to plaintext
Modern (Symmetric-key) Block Ciphers
• Suppose that we have a block cipher where n = 64. If there are 10 1’s in the ciphertext, how
many trial-and-error tests does Eve (an attacker) need to do to recover the plaintext from the
intercepted ciphertext in each of the following cases?
a. The cipher is designed as a substitution cipher.
• Needs to try all 264 64-bit blocks to find one that makes sense.
b. The cipher is designed as a transposition cipher.
• Number of 1’s and 0’s remain the same in the ciphertext
• Needs to launch an exhaustive-search attack using only those 64-bit blocks that have
exactly 10 1’s
• (64!) / [(10!) (54!)] = 151,473,214,816 out of 264.

This is m+nCn or m+nCm

(combination) which are equal
From 64 different locations we
need to choose 10 different
locations in multiple ways.