Cryptography and Network

Security
Third Edition
by William Stallings

Lecture slides by Lawrie Brown

 Symmetric Encryption
• or conventional / private-key / single-key
• sender and recipient share a common key
• all classical encryption algorithms are
private-key
• was only type prior to invention of public-
key in 1970’s
 Basic Terminology
• plaintext - the original message
• ciphertext - the coded message
• cipher - algorithm for transforming plaintext to ciphertext
• key - info used in cipher known only to sender/receiver
• encipher (encrypt) - converting plaintext to ciphertext
• decipher (decrypt) - recovering ciphertext from plaintext
• cryptography - study of encryption principles/methods
• cryptanalysis (codebreaking) - the study of principles/
methods of deciphering ciphertext without knowing key
• cryptology - the field of both cryptography and
cryptanalysis
Symmetric Cipher Model
 Requirements
• two requirements for secure use of
symmetric encryption:
– a strong encryption algorithm
– a secret key known only to sender / receiver
Y = EK(X)
X = DK(Y)
• assume encryption algorithm is known
• implies a secure channel to distribute key
 Cryptography
• can characterize by:
– type of encryption operations used
• substitution / transposition / product
– number of keys used
• single-key or private / two-key or public
– way in which plaintext is processed
• block / stream
 Types of Cryptanalytic Attacks
• ciphertext only
– only know algorithm / ciphertext, statistical, can
identify plaintext
• known plaintext
– know/suspect plaintext & ciphertext to attack cipher
• chosen plaintext
– select plaintext and obtain ciphertext to attack cipher
• chosen ciphertext
– select ciphertext and obtain plaintext to attack cipher
• chosen text
– select either plaintext or ciphertext to en/decrypt to
attack cipher
 Brute Force Search
• always possible to simply try every key
• most basic attack, proportional to key size
• assume either know / recognise plaintext
 Classical Substitution Ciphers
• where letters of plaintext are replaced by
other letters or by numbers or symbols
• or if plaintext is viewed as a sequence of
bits, then substitution involves replacing
plaintext bit patterns with ciphertext bit
patterns
 Caesar Cipher
• earliest known substitution cipher
• by Julius Caesar
• first attested use in military affairs
• replaces each letter by 3rd letter on
• example:
meet me after the toga party
PHHW PH DIWHU WKH WRJD SDUWB
 Caesar Cipher
• can define transformation as:
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A B C

• mathematically give each letter a number

a b c d e f g h i j k l m
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
n o p q r s t u v w x y Z
13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

• then have Caesar cipher as:

C = E(p) = (p + k) mod (26)
p = D(C) = (C – k) mod (26)
Cryptanalysis of Caesar Cipher
• only have 26 possible ciphers
– A maps to A,B,..Z
• could simply try each in turn
• a brute force search
• given ciphertext, just try all shifts of letters
• do need to recognize when have plaintext
• eg. break ciphertext "GCUA VQ DTGCM"
 Monoalphabetic Cipher
• rather than just shifting the alphabet
• could shuffle (jumble) the letters arbitrarily
• each plaintext letter maps to a different random
ciphertext letter
• hence key is 26 letters long

Plain: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Cipher: DKVQFIBJWPESCXHTMYAUOLRGZN
Plaintext: ifwewishtoreplaceletters
Ciphertext: WIRFRWAJUHYFTSDVFSFUUFYA
Monoalphabetic Cipher Security
• now have a total of 26! = 4 x 1026 keys
• with so many keys, might think is secure
• but would be !!!WRONG!!!
• problem is language characteristics
 Language Redundancy and
Cryptanalysis
• human languages are redundant
• eg "th lrd s m shphrd shll nt wnt"
• letters are not equally commonly used
• in English e is by far the most common letter
• then T,R,N,I,O,A,S
• other letters are fairly rare
• cf. Z,J,K,Q,X
• have tables of single, double & triple letter
frequencies
English Letter Frequencies
 Playfair Cipher
• not even the large number of keys in a
monoalphabetic cipher provides security
• one approach to improving security was to
encrypt multiple letters
• the Playfair Cipher is an example
• invented by Charles Wheatstone in 1854,
but named after his friend Baron Playfair
 Playfair Key Matrix
• a 5X5 matrix of letters based on a keyword
• fill in letters of keyword (sans duplicates)
• fill rest of matrix with other letters
• eg. using the keyword MONARCHY
MONAR
CHYBD
EFGIK
LPQST
UVWXZ
 Encrypting and Decrypting
• plaintext encrypted two letters at a time:
1. if a pair is a repeated letter, insert a filler like 'X',
eg. "balloon" encrypts as "ba lx lo on"
2. if both letters fall in the same row, replace each with
letter to right (wrapping back to start from end),
eg. “ar" encrypts as "RM"
3. if both letters fall in the same column, replace each
with the letter below it (again wrapping to top from
bottom), eg. “mu" encrypts to "CM"
4. otherwise each letter is replaced by the one in its
row in the column of the other letter of the pair, eg.
“hs" encrypts to "BP", and “ea" to "IM" or "JM" (as
desired)
 Security of the Playfair Cipher
• security much improved over monoalphabetic
• since have 26 x 26 = 676 digrams
• would need a 676 entry frequency table to
analyse (verses 26 for a monoalphabetic)
• and correspondingly more ciphertext
• was widely used for many years (eg. US &
British military in WW1)
• it can be broken, given a few hundred letters
• since still has much of plaintext structure
 Polyalphabetic Ciphers
• another approach to improving security is to use
multiple cipher alphabets
• called polyalphabetic substitution ciphers
• makes cryptanalysis harder with more alphabets
to guess and flatter frequency distribution
• use a key to select which alphabet is used for
each letter of the message
• use each alphabet in turn
• repeat from start after end of key is reached
 Vigenère Cipher
• simplest polyalphabetic substitution cipher
is the Vigenère Cipher
• effectively multiple caesar ciphers
• key is multiple letters long K = k1 k2 ... kd
• ith letter specifies ith alphabet to use
• use each alphabet in turn
• repeat from start after d letters in message
• decryption simply works in reverse
 Example
• write the plaintext out
• write the keyword repeated above it
• use each key letter as a caesar cipher key
• encrypt the corresponding plaintext letter
• eg using keyword deceptive
key: deceptivedeceptivedeceptive
plaintext: wearediscoveredsaveyourself
ciphertext:ZICVTWQNGRZGVTWAVZHCQYGLMGJ
 Autokey Cipher
• ideally want a key as long as the message
• Vigenère proposed the autokey cipher
• with keyword is prefixed to message as key
• knowing keyword can recover the first few letters
• use these in turn on the rest of the message
• but still have frequency characteristics to attack
• eg. given key deceptive
key: deceptivewearediscoveredsav
plaintext: wearediscoveredsaveyourself
ciphertext:ZICVTWQNGKZEIIGASXSTSLVVWLA
 One-Time Pad
• if a truly random key as long as the
message is used, the cipher will be secure
• called a One-Time pad
• is unbreakable since ciphertext bears no
statistical relationship to the plaintext
• since for any plaintext & any ciphertext
there exists a key mapping one to other
• can only use the key once though
• have problem of safe distribution of key
 Transposition Ciphers
• now consider classical transposition or
permutation ciphers
• these hide the message by rearranging
the letter order
• without altering the actual letters used
• can recognise these since have the same
frequency distribution as the original text
 Rail Fence cipher
• write message letters out diagonally over a
number of rows
• then read off cipher row by row
• eg. write message out as:
m e m a t r h t g p r y
e t e f e t e o a a t
• giving ciphertext
MEMATRHTGPRYETEFETEOAAT
 Row Transposition Ciphers
• a more complex scheme
• write letters of message out in rows over a
specified number of columns
• then reorder the columns according to
some key before reading off the rows
Key: 3 4 2 1 5 6 7
Plaintext: a t t a c k p
o s t p o n e
d u n t i l t
w o a m x y z
Ciphertext: TTNAAPTMTSUOAODWCOIXKNLYPETZ
 Product Ciphers
• ciphers using substitutions or transpositions are
not secure because of language characteristics
• hence consider using several ciphers in
succession to make harder, but:
– two substitutions make a more complex substitution
– two transpositions make more complex transposition
– but a substitution followed by a transposition makes a
new much harder cipher
• this is bridge from classical to modern ciphers