SRI MUTHUKUMARAN INST.

OF TECHNOLOGY
DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
CS6701- Cryptography & Network Security
First Assessment Test – Two Marks – Question & Answer

1. What are Active Attacks?

Active attacks involve some modification of the data stream or the creation of
a false stream. It can be subdivided into four categories.
(i) Masquerade (ii) Replay
(iii) Modification of messages (iv) Denial of Service(DoS)

2. What are Passive Attacks?

Passive attacks are in the nature of eavesdropping on, or monitoring of
transmissions. The goal of the opponent is to obtain information that is being
transmitted. Two types of passive attacks are
(i) Release of message contents
(ii) Traffic Analysis

3. What are the essential ingredients of Symmetric Cipher?

A symmetric encryption scheme has five ingredients.

(i) Plain Text (ii) Encryption algorithm

(iii) Secret Key (iv) Cipher text
(v) Decryption algorithm

4. What is meant by Denial of Service (DoS)?

The denial of service(DoS) is an active attack that prevents or inhibits the
normal use or management of communications facilities. This attack may have a
specific target, for example, an entity may suppress all messages directed to a
particular destination. Another form of service denial is the disruption of an entire
network either by disabling the network or by overloading it with messages so as to
degrade performance.

5. What is Brute-force attack?

The attacker tries every possible key on a piece of cipher text until an
intelligible translation into plain text is obtained. On average, half of possible keys
must be tried to achieve success.
 It is a trial and error method used by application programs to decode encrypted
data or keys through exhaustive effort rather than employing intellectual strategies.

6. Encrypt the plain text “attack postponed” using Caesar Cipher(C=E(5,p)).

plain text(p)=“attack postponed”
C = E(k, p) = (p + k) mod 26 key = 5
C = (p + 5) mod 26

Plain Text a b c d e f g h i
Cipher Text F G H I J K L M N
Plain Text J k l m n o p q r
Cipher Text O P Q R S T U V W
Plain Text s t u v w x y z -
Cipher Text X Y Z A B C D E -

Cipher Text : FYYFHP UTXYUTSJI

7. What is Transposition Cipher?

In cryptography, a transposition cipher is a method of encryption by which the
positions held by units of plain text are shifted according to a regular system, so that
the cipher text constitutes a permutation of the plain text. The simplest such cipher is
the rail fence technique.

8. Decrypt the cipher text “PHHW PH” by using Caesar Cipher(p=D(3,C)).

Cipher Text(C)= “PHHW PH”

Plain Text a b c d e f g h i
Cipher Text D E F G H I J K L
Plain Text J k l m n o p q r
Cipher Text M N O P Q R S T U
Plain Text s t u v w x y z -
Cipher Text V W X Y Z A B C -

p = D(k, C) P = (C - k) mod 26 key = 3

C = (C - 3) mod 26
Plain Text is “meet me”
9. What are the two problems with One-time pad?
The two problems with One-time pad are
 There is the practical problem of making large quantities of random keys.
 Even more daunting is the problem of key distribution and protection.

10. Write a note on Steganography.

It is the hiding of a secret message within an ordinary message and the
extraction of it at its destination. It means that concealing the existence of the
message with something else. The various other techniques have been used
historically are

(i) Character marking (ii) Invisible Ink

(ii) Typewriter correction ribbon iv) Pin puncture

11. What is Abelian Group? List the axioms should obey for Abelian Group.
Let (G, *) be a group. If a, b belongs to G and a * b = b * a, then the group is
said to be Abelian or commutative group. The following axioms are obeyed for
Abelian Group.

(A1) Closure
(A2) Associative
(A3) Identity element
(A4) Inverse element and
(A5) Commutative

12. What are Rings?

A ring R, sometimes denoted by {R,+, },is a set of elements with two binary
operations, called addition and multiplication, such that for all a, b, c in R the
following axioms are obeyed.

(A1-A5) R is an Abelian group

(M1) Closure under multiplication
(M2) Associativity of multiplication
(M3) Distributive law
(M4) Commutative of multiplication
(M5) Multiplicative identity
(M6) No zero divisors
13. Define Fields.
A field F, sometimes denoted by {F,+, }, is a set of elements with two binary
operations, called addition and multiplication, such that for all a, b, c in F the
following axioms are obeyed.

(A1-A6) and (M1-M6) F is a Ring for Integral Domain

(M7) Multiplicative inverse

14. List the three classes of Polynomial Arithmetic.

The three classes of Polynomial Arithmetic are

 Ordinary polynomial arithmetic, using the basic rules of algebra

 Polynomial arithmetic in which the arithmetic on the coefficients is
performed modulo p; that is, the coefficients are in GF(p)
 Polynomial arithmetic in which the coefficients are in GF(p), and the
polynomials are defined modulo a polynomial m(x) whose highest
power is some integer n

15. State Euler's theorem.

Euler’s theorem states that for every a and n that are relatively prime.

aΦ(n)≡ 1 (mod n)
Where ϕ(n) is a totient function

16. State Fermat's theorem.

Fermat’s theorem states the following. If p is prime and a is a positive integer
not divisible by p, then

ap-1 ≡ 1 (mod p)

17. Write a Euclid's algorithm to compute GCD.

Euclid(a, b)
while b != 0
r  a mod b
a  b
b  r
end while
return a
18. Write down the difference between Stream Cipher and Block Cipher.
Stream cipher is one that encrypts a digital data stream one bit or one byte at a
time. The stream cipher techniques are Caesar cipher, Playfair cipher, etc.

Block cipher is one in which a block of plain text is treated as a whole and to
produce a cipher text block of equal length. Typically, a block size of 64 or 128 bits
is used. The block cipher techniques are DES, AES and Triple DES.

19. What do you mean by diffusion and confusion?

Confusion is cryptographic technique that seeks to make the relationship
between the statistics of the cipher text and the value of the encryption key as
complex as possible. This is achieved by the use of a complex scrambling algorithm
that depends on the key and the input.

Diffusion is a cryptographic technique that seeks to obscure the statistical

structure of the plain text by spreading out the influence of each individual plain text
digit over many cipher text digits.

20. What is the purpose of S-Boxes in DES?

In cryptography, an S-Box is a basic component of Symmetric Key Algorithms
which performs substitution. In block ciphers, they are typically used to obscure the
relationship between the key and the cipher text. It fulfills the Shannon’s property of
confusion.

21. What do you mean by Avalanche effect?

A desirable property of any encryption algorithm is that a small change in
either the plain text or the key should produce a significant change in the cipher text.
In particular, a change in one bit of the plain text or the key should produce a change
in many bits of the cipher text. This is referred to as Avalanche effect.

22. What is Meet-in-the-Middle-attack?

This is a cryptanalytic attack that attempts to find a value in each of the range
and domain of the composition of two functions such the forward mapping of one
through the first function is the same as the inverse image of the other through the
second function-quite literally meeting in the middle of the composed function.

23. What is Electronic Code Book(ECB) mode?

The simplest mode is the electronic codebook mode, in which plain text is
handled one block at a time and each block of plain text is encrypted using the same
key. The term codebook is used because, for a given key, there is a unique cipher text
for every b-bit block of plain text.
24. What is Cipher Feedback(CFB)mode?
Input is processed b-bits at a time. Preceding cipher text is used as input to the
encryption algorithm to produce pseudo random output, which is XORed with plain
text to produce next unit of cipher text.

25. Write short notes on Blowfish.

Blowfish is a symmetric block cipher that can be used as a drop in replacement
for DES or IDEA. It takes a variable-length key, from 32 bits to 448 bits, making it
ideal for both domestic and exportable use. Blowfish is unpatented and license-free,
and is available free for all uses.