CRYPTOGRAPHY

BITS F463
Lecture 2
2018-2019 2nd sem
Symmetric Cipher Model

BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus

Characterizing cryptographic
systems – 3 dimensions

characterize cryptographic systems by:

type of encryption operations used
substitution / transposition / product
number of keys used
single-key or private / two-key or
public
The way in which plaintext is processed
block / stream

BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus

One Time Pad (OTP)
 In cryptography, the one-time pad (OTP) is a type of encryption
which has been proven to be impossible to crack if used correctly
 Each bit or character from the plaintext is encrypted by a modular
addition with a bit or character from a secret random key (or pad) of
the same length as the plaintext, resulting in a ciphertext
 If the key is truly random, as large as or greater than the plaintext,
never reused in whole or part, and kept secret, the ciphertext will be
impossible to decrypt or break without knowing the key
 It has also been proven that any cipher with the perfect secrecy
property must use keys with effectively the same requirements as
OTP keys.
 However, practical problems have prevented one-time pads from
being widely used.

BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus

Perfect secrecy

 given an encrypted message (or ciphertext) from a

perfectly secure encryption system (or cipher),
absolutely nothing will be revealed about the
unencrypted message (or plaintext) by the ciphertext

BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus

Brute Force Search

 On an average, half of all possible keys must be tried to

achieve success.
 DES is 56, AES is 128, Triple-DES is 168, plus general
mono-alphabetic cipher

BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus

Brute Force Attack

 always possible to simply try every key

 most basic attack, proportional to key size
 assume either know / recognise plaintext
Key Size (bits) Number of Time required at 1 Time required at 106
Alternative Keys decryption/µs decryptions/µs

32 232 = 4.3  109 231 µs = 35.8 minutes 2.15 milliseconds

56 256 = 7.2  1016 255 µs = 1142 years 10.01 hours

128 2128 = 3.4  1038 2127 µs = 5.4  1024 years 5.4  1018 years

168 2168 = 3.7  1050 2167 µs = 5.9  1036 years 5.9  1030 years

26 characters 26! = 4  1026 2  1026 µs = 6.4  1012 years 6.4  106 years
(permutation)

BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus

Classical Substitution Ciphers

letters of plaintext are replaced by other

letters or by numbers or symbols
if plaintext is viewed as a sequence of bits,
then the substitution involves replacing
plaintext bit patterns with ciphertext bit
patterns

BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus

Various substitution ciphers

 Caesar cipher
 Monoalphabetic ciphers
 Playfair cipher
 Hill cipher
 Polyalphabetic ciphers
 One-Time Pad

BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus

Caesar Cipher

 earliest known substitution cipher

 by Julius Caesar
 first attested use in military affairs
 replaces each letter by 3rd letter on
example:
PT: meet me after the toga party
CT: PHHW PH DIWHU WKH WRJD SDUWB
Also known as caesar’s cipher, caesar shift,
shift cipher or caesar code

BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus

Monoalphabetic Cipher

 rather than just shifting the alphabet we could

shuffle (jumble) the letters arbitrarily
 each plaintext letter maps to a different random
ciphertext letter; hence key is 26 letters long
With only 25 possible keys, the Caesar
cipher is far from secure
Plain: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Cipher: DKVQFIBJWPESCXHTMYAUOLRGZN

Plaintext: ifwewishtoreplaceletters
Ciphertext: WIRFRWAJUHYFTSDVFSFUUFYA

BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus