Public-Key Cryptography - The RSA

UNIVERSITATEA BABE-BOLYAI CLUJ-NAPOCA
FACULTATEA DE MATEMATIC I INFORMATIC

DEPARTAMENTUL INFORMATIC
PUBLIC-KEY CRYPTOGRAPHY :
THE RSA AND THE RABIN CRYPTOSYSTEMS
LUCRARE DE DIPLOM
Coordonator tiinific:
Conf. Dr. Septimiu Crivei
Student:
Mihnea Rdulescu
2008
BABE-BOLYAI UNIVERSITY CLUJ-NAPOCA

FACULTY OF MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
PUBLIC-KEY CRYPTOGRAPHY :
THE RSA AND THE RABIN CRYPTOSYSTEMS
BACHELOR OF SCIENCE THESIS
Scientific Coordinator:
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Septimiu Crivei
Student:
Mihnea Rdulescu
2008
To my fiance
ABSTRACT
Starting in the 50s, there has been a growing interest in securing sensitive digital data, for the
purpose of storing it safely, as well as transmitting it securely over unsecured communication
channels. To address some the drawbacks of symmetric-key cryptography (mainly the key
distribution and authentication issues), Diffie and Hellman set the stage in 1976 for what became
the standard entitled public-key cryptography. From the 90s on, the interest in digital data
security has drifted also to the realm of non-governmental computing, that is companies and
common computer users.
This papers main goal is to deliver an accurate image on the concepts of data security and
cryptography, by presenting the theory and applications of two of the fundamental public-key
cryptosystems used nowadays, namely the RSA and the Rabin cryptosystems. To prove the
usefulness and power of public-key cryptography from a practical standpoint, two software
applications have been designed, one for each cryptosystem, that implement every algorithm
inherent to the process of securing data (primes generation, key generation, encryption and
decryption). Also, the paper promotes public-key cryptography as an efficient means of testing
the speed of today's computer processors, due to the computational intensiveness of its
underlying operations.
This work is organized into five chapters, as follows:

Chapter 1 Introduction to Cryptography explains the basics of cryptography
(terminology and the symmetric-key cryptography), in order to allow a smooth transition
to the main topic of the paper, as well as provide the reader with an understanding of the
reasons that made symmetric-key cryptography insufficient for modern-day data security
tasks.
Chapter 2 Mathematical Foundations of Public-key Cryptography displays the

mathematical background of public-key cryptosystems (Euclidean algorithms, modular
arithmetic, modular equations and equation systems, primality testing), each
mathematical model being tested against an example and then converted into a suitable
computational algorithm.
Chapter 3 Public-key Cryptosystems focuses on detailing the structure, algorithms
and real-world applicability (encryption of small amounts of data, symmetric-key
exchange and digital signatures) of two remarkable cryptosystems (RSA and Rabin),
while relying on the mathematical background exposed in the previous chapter.
Chapter 4 Implementing the RSA and the Rabin Cryptosystems covers the steps
needed for developing a powerful and up-to-date public-key encryption software
application for each cryptosystem (outline, analysis and design, implementation, testing),
conforming strictly to the encryption security standards of today and even trying to
surpass them in some respects.
Chapter 5 Processor Core Benchmarking unlocks a rather innovative aspect of
public-key cryptography, that of employing its underlying computationally-demanding
algorithms as an effective way of assessing the relative performance of the processor
cores of modern-day CPUs.
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1 - Introduction to Cryptography.................................................................................3
1.1 Preliminaries..................................................................................................................3
1.2 Symmetric-key cryptosystems......................................................................................9
Chapter 2 - Mathematical Foundations of Public-key Cryptography....................................18
2.1 One-way and trapdoor functions.................................................................................18
2.2 The Euclidean algorithms............................................................................................21
2.3 Modular arithmetic......................................................................................................24
2.4 Primality testing methods............................................................................................45
Chapter 3 - Public-key Cryptosystems......................................................................................54
3.1 The RSA cryptosystem................................................................................................54
3.2 The Rabin cryptosystem..............................................................................................63
3.3 Applications of the RSA and the Rabin cryptosystems...............................................73
Chapter 4 - Implementing the RSA and the Rabin Cryptosystems.......................................81
4.1 Use cases......................................................................................................................83
4.2 Subsystem model.........................................................................................................84
4.3 Package diagram..........................................................................................................85
4.4 Class diagram...............................................................................................................87
4.5 Sequence diagram........................................................................................................98
4.6 Explaining the implementation..................................................................................100
4.7 Revealing the applications functionality..................................................................106
Chapter 5 Processor Core Benchmarking...........................................................................132
5.1 The concept of benchmarking....................................................................................132
5.2 Benchmark development fundamentals.....................................................................133
5.3 Implementing the benchmark.....................................................................................141
Conclusions.................................................................................................................................151
References...................................................................................................................................153
1
Chapter 1 - Introduction to Cryptography
CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION TO CRYPTOGRAPHY

1.1 Preliminaries
Cryptography (derived from Greek krypts "hidden," and the verb grfo
"write") is the study of message secrecy. Cryptography is one of the oldest intellectual pursuits
available to man, almost as old as mathematics itself. Nowadays it is regarded as a science in
continuous and rapid development, at the junction between mathematics and computer science,
with sensible applications in various domains, such as electronic commerce, banking procedures,
computer authentication protocols and information exchange services, just to name a few.
1.1.1 The story of Alice and Bob

Put in an oversimplified perspective, cryptography is concerned with enabling two people, Alice
and Bob, to communicate over an insecure message-passing network, in such a way that the
content of the messages being exchanged is fully understood by the participants (Alice and Bob),
but cannot be exposed by an opponent (eavesdropper, Oscar).
receives a message
sends a message
communication channel
Alice
sends a message
receives a message
eavesdrops
Oscar
Fig.1.1 Simplified communication network

3
Bob
The story of Alice and Bob expresses the basic principles, foundations and challenges of
cryptography using allegory and abstraction to set the framework for a formal, rigorous and
systematic approach to the domain.
Alice and Bob are apparently ordinary people, which have some interesting twists to their
personalities: Bob is a stockbroker illicitly selling stock shares to speculators, while Alice is a
speculator herself, this being her primary reason for talking to Bob. Besides being concerned on
eavesdropping because of the illegality of their stock operations, Alice is worried about her
husband not knowing her involvement in the stock scheme, while Bob is preoccupied on his other
subversive enterprises not being discovered.
Alice communicates with Bob either by telephone or by e-mail. As they talk very often on the
phone, the telephone service becomes increasingly expensive, coupled with Alice being overly
miserly, one of Alices immediate goals is minimizing the cost of the phone call.
The telephone line connecting Alice to Bob is very noisy and prone to interferences as well as
communication failure. Due to these difficulties, at some times, Alice and Bob can hardly
communicate with each other. So Alice has to deal with network noise and failures.
It seems the pursuits of Alice and Bob are well-known to the Tax Authority and Secret Police,
governmental organizations which both have almost limitless resources and always listen to the
conversations between Alice and Bob. Because some of the favorite subjects of Alice and Bob
involve tax fraud and the overthrowing of the government, Alice has to ensure the confidentiality
of the conversation with Bob.
One of the tactics employed by the agents of the previously-mentioned organizations is to

telephone Alice and pretend to be Bob. As Alice has never met Bob in person, another challenge
arises for her, namely the identification problem.
To further complicate matters, there is also a trust issue between Alice and Bob, because of some
previous deceitful behavior of Bob. As such, Alice has an extra authentication issue. [net01]
4
To summarize, for allowing Alice to successfully communicate with Bob, while taking into
account the inherent communication protocols, cryptography must be powerful enough to:
maintain a minimal cost of equipment and active network connection

retain information consistency even over a faulty connection
ensure confidentiality of the information being passed across the channel
securely identify and authenticate the protagonists
1.1.2 Terminology
Plaintext ( ) = a sequence of characters (either letters from the alphabet, numbers or bytes of
data) that is in a form at which no effort has been made to render the information unreadable and
thus, that can be easily read from and understood. [wiki]
Ciphertext ( ) = a sequence of characters (either letters from the alphabet, numbers or bytes of
data) that is encrypted using an encryption algorithm. Plaintext cannot be deduced from properly
encrypted ciphertext.
Encryption = the process of turning plaintext into ciphertext (encoding).
Decryption = the process of turning ciphertext into plaintext (decoding).
Key ( ) = a piece of information (or parameter) that controls the execution of a cryptography
algorithm. A key can be used either for encryption (obtaining the ciphertext out of the plaintext),
or decryption (obtaining the plaintext out of the ciphertext). In many cryptographic systems (see
Public-Key Cryptography), the key for encryption and the one for decryption are not the same.
plaintext
key
key
encryption
decryption
ciphertext
plaintext
Fig.1.2 Encryption-decryption scheme [Sch96]
Cipher = algorithm for performing encryption and decryption
Cryptanalysis = (derived from the Greek krypts, "hidden", and analein, "to loosen" or "to
untie") the studying and devising of methods and strategies to allow obtaining the meaning of
encrypted data, without having access to the secret information used to generate the encryption.
[wiki] In more formal terms, it means trying to compute the key that generated the encryption,
having access to only the ciphertext. [Cri06]
Cryptology = the science encompassing both cryptography and cryptanalysis, which studies the
security and safety behind data communication and storage.
Cryptosystem = a suite of notations and algorithms required to implement a particular form of

encryption and decryption. [wiki]
Formally, a cryptosystem can be defined as a 5-tuple (P, C, K, E, D): [Sti95]
P is a finite set of possible plaintexts
C is a finite set of possible ciphertexts
K is a finite set of possible keys (the keyspace)
E is a finite set of possible encryption functions (encryption rules)
D is a finite set of possible decryption functions (decryption rules)
K, there are:
an encryption rule
: P C,
a decryption rule
: C P,
a fundamental constraint:
an implementation constraint: given
and
should be efficiently
computable
Notes on cryptosystems:
In order to satisfy the fundamental constraint previously stated, the encryption function
P C must always be injective.
If P = C, each encryption rule
and each decryption rule
are permutations.
1.1.3 A simple encryption-decryption example
The following example uses the Caesar cipher, supposedly employed by the Romans during the
time of Julius Caesar to send orders from Rome to military commanders on the field and back. It
is a simple rotation cipher, in which each plaintext character is replaced by the
character to
the right, modulo the size of the alphabet.
Formalization of the Caesar cipher [Cri06]:

P=C=K=
Example:
English alphabet enriched with character space
shift to the right of 3 positions
English alphabet enriched with character space to
correspondence:
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
Encryption:
Plaintext: julius caesar
Numerical correspondence:
Encryption (using
):
Ciphertext: MXOLXVCFDHVDU
Decryption:
Ciphertext: MXOLXVCFDHVDU
Decryption (using
):
Plaintext: julius caesar
1.1.4 Cryptography vs. steganography

Generally, there a two methods of hiding the content of a message: [Sta05]
cryptography - applying of various transformations to the message content, making it
unintelligible to outsiders
steganography - concealing the message existence itself
Steganography uses a supposedly harmless message cover (for instance, a digital picture) inside
which it adds its message, overwriting the least-significant bit(s) of (some of) the bytes of the
cover message. Therefore, the maximum length the hidden message can have, without spoiling its
concealment, is directly proportional to the length of the cover message. [wiki]
The main drawback of steganography against cryptography is that the discovery of the
information-hiding system used leads to steganography being utterly useless, while for
cryptography the information regarding the encryption system used is already assumed to be
known by an intruder.
Steganography might hold a significant advantage over cryptography in cases where even the
acknowledged existence of the communication between parties poses a problem. [Sta05]
8
Modern steganographic techniques involve hiding the secret message inside:

digital pictures (BMP, JPEG, TIF, PNG, PhotoCD file formats)
digital music (WAV, MP3, OGG file formats)
digital binary files (executables) [Elk07]
1.1.5 A simple steganography example

Hiding the message inside a Kodak Photo-CD (PCD) file: [Sta05]
PCD maximum image resolution (in pixels) : 2048 x 3072
each pixel contains 24-bit of RGB (red-green-blue) encoded color information, meaning
there are 8 bits = 1 byte for each color channel
by altering the least-significant bit of each color channel byte (storing a hidden message
bit of data in it), the image remains unchanged to the human eye
applying the previously-stated reasoning, each pixel of the image can hold 3 bits of
hidden data
as such, the maximum amount of hidden data a PCD image can safely store is 2048 x
3072 x 3 = 18874368 bits = 2359296 bytes = 2.25 MB
1.2 Symmetric-key cryptosystems

Consider the cryptosystem (P, C, K, E, D) with key K
K,
E and
D the encryption
and decryption rules, respectively. The given cryptosystem is said to be symmetric-key, if for
each key K
K and encryption-decryption pair
feasible (easy") to compute
knowing only
depending on K, it is computationally
and
knowing only
. [Men96] Symmetric-
key cryptography is also referred to as single-key, one-key and private-key cryptography.
Since most of the symmetric-key cryptosystems employ the same plaintext and ciphertext spaces
(P = C) and many the same function for both encryption and decryption (
(P = C),
key K
function
: P P, where
: (P = C)
K ), the term symmetric-key becomes completely justified. Such a

is called an involution. [Men96]
9
1.2.1 A simple symmetric-key encryption-decryption example

A rather standard example of involutive symmetric-key cryptography is the binary XOR
function, applied to bytes or groups of bytes. This function is extensively used in computer
science in low-level byte-manipulating routines as well as in applications desiring to obscure data
in circumstances where security is not a defining characteristic.
Formalization of the XOR cryptosystem:

P=C=K=
(1 byte = 8 bits)
and
ing occurs bit-by-bit on corresponding bit positions of

highest bit:
XOR
Example:
is a 1-byte key,
= (125)10 = (01111101)2
Encryption:
Plaintext:
Base 2 correspondence:
Encryption using XOR:
Ciphertext:
Decryption:
Ciphertext:
Base 2 correspondence:
Decryption using XOR:
10
, where the XORand
, from the lowest to the
Plaintext:
1.2.2 Characteristics of symmetric-key cryptosystems

Advantages:
Speed - of the two main types of cryptosystems in use today (symmetric-key and
asymmetric-key), the symmetric-key is the fastest by a large margin. In terms of the
practical computational intensiveness of its underlying operations, symmetric-key
cryptography is considered hundreds of times less intensive than its asymmetrical-key
counterpart. [wiki]
Small key size - the key size for symmetric-key cryptosystems is several orders of
magnitude smaller than the key size of asymmetric-key cryptosystems. [Cri06]
Disadvantages:
Key distribution problem - requires a communication channel that is both confidential and
authentic to exchange the symmetric-key securely between parties. [Men96] To reduce
the impact of being discovered by an opponent, the shared secret key should be changed
regularly and kept secure during distribution and when in service. Also, it is to be noted
that the number of keys required for communicating between parties increases
dramatically with each new party being added to the communication network. As such,
for a network of n users, the number of private keys required is
11
. [wiki]
key source
secured channel
unsecured channel
K
encryption
decryption
plaintext
source
Opponent
plaintext
destination
Alice
Oscar
Bob
Fig.1.3 Communication scheme in a symmetric-key cryptosystem [Men96]

No digital signing - symmetric-key cryptosystems cannot be used for the authentication
(establishing or confirming a users digital identity as authentic) or non-repudiation
(eliminating any possibility of denying having sent or having received a message)
purposes. [wiki]
1.2.3 Block ciphers vs. stream ciphers
A block cipher is a symmetric-key cryptographic scheme, in which the message (either plaintext
or ciphertext) is split into blocks (groups) of equally-sized data. The operations to be applied on
the message as a whole entity, are, in fact, reduced to the successive manipulation (for encryption
or decryption purposes) of the blocks of data composing the message.
Most of the remarkable symmetric-key cryptosystems in use today utilize block ciphers (our two
previous cryptosystem examples, namely the Caesar cipher and the XOR function, both operate
on block ciphers). The flagship of block-cipher cryptosystems today is the AES (Advanced
12
Encryption Standard), embraced in 2001 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST) as the de-facto standard for protecting classified information in non-governmental
systems. [wiki]
AES works with a block size of 128 bits and three candidate key sizes (of 128, 192 or 256 bits,
respectively). Benefiting from a scalable key-size design, AES can be promoted as a
cryptosystem appropriate for diverse security needs (128-bit key size for secret-level data, while
196 and 256-bit key sizes for top secret data).
Key K
Plaintext
block
encryption
...
Plaintext
block
Ciphertext
block
encryption
Ciphertext
block
Fig.1.4 Block cipher encryption diagram
Key K
Ciphertext
block
decryption
...
Ciphertext
block
Plaintext
block
decryption
Plaintext
block
Fig.1.5 Block cipher decryption diagram
13
A stream cipher is a symmetric-key cryptographic scheme, in which the message stream (either
plaintext or ciphertext) is processed byte-by-byte (or bit-by-bit). [wiki] What sets stream ciphers
apart from block ciphers, is that the encryption (and, consequently, decryption) rules are not
restricted to using the same key for each iteration. Unlike in the case of block ciphers, where the
key space K was, in fact, composed out of one-element key sets, for stream ciphers a key
is made out of several (distinct) keys
, forming a keystream.
The most widespread stream-cipher cryptosystem of today (including its variations) is RC4,
employed in communication protocols such as SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and WEP (Wireless
Encryption Protocol). Because of its age (since 1987), it no longer represents a good informationsecurity choice for modern needs, although some systems still using it are adequately secure for
practical purposes. [wiki]
Working with stream ciphers can become a very profitable enterprise when the data buffer pool
of the system is severely limited, plaintext comes in quantities of unknowable length, the amount
of computations required to manipulate the data (for encryption or decryption) increases
exponentially with the amount of data processed at once, or when error propagation issues are of
concern to the system.
Key
Plaintext
byte
encryption
Key
...
Plaintext
byte
Ciphertext byte
encryption
Ciphertext byte
Fig.1.6 Stream cipher encryption diagram

14
...
Key
Ciphertext
byte
decryption
Key
...
Ciphertext
byte
decryption
Plaintext byte
...
Plaintext byte
Fig.1.7 Stream cipher decryption diagram

1.2.4 A simple steam cipher encryption-decryption example
The following example uses the Vigenre cipher, a cryptosystem developed by the Italian
mathematician Giovan Batista Belaso, published in the year 1553 A.D. and misattributed to
Blaise de Vigenre. [wiki]
Formalization of the Vigenre cipher [Cri06]:

P=C=
,K=
K,
Example:
15
correspondence:
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
encryption keyword GIOVAN, therefore
and
Encryption:
Plaintext: vigenere
Encryption (using
):
Ciphertext: BRV_OSYN
Decryption:
Ciphertext: BRV_OSYN
Decryption (using
):
Plaintext: vigenere
1.2.5 Possible attacks on symmetric-key cryptosystems
The objective of an attack against a cryptosystem is deducing the plaintext from the ciphertext,
or, even more dramatically, to recover the encryption-decryption key itself. Careful searching and
identification of potentially secure cryptographic functions greatly reduces the chance of
success of such attacks.
Possible attack types and their strategies:
ciphertext-only attack - the opponent has access only to some ciphertext and is trying to
deduce the encryption-decryption key or the plaintext solely by observing the ciphertext.
This is the least efficient type of attack, and, should it succeed, the underlying
cryptosystem is proven to be completely insecure. [Men96]
16
known plaintext attack - the intruder has a quantity of plaintext along with its
corresponding ciphertext and tries to detect the encryption-decryption protocol employed.
Such an attack is one step ahead in terms of efficiency to the ciphertext-only attack,
although not by a significant margin. [Men96]
chosen plaintext attack - the opponent has the opportunity to chose its own plaintexts
and be given their corresponding ciphertexts in return. [wiki]
chosen ciphertext attack - the adversary has access to the decryption equipment (but not
to the decryption key) for a limited amount of time as is able to decrypt any ciphertext of
its choosing. The goal of such an attack is to be able to determine the plaintext from
ciphertexts after the access to the decryption equipment has been terminated. [Men96]
17
Chapter 2 Mathematical Foundations of Public-Key Cryptography
CHAPTER 2 - MATHEMATICAL FOUNDATIONS OF PUBLIC-KEY

CRYPTOGRAPHY
Consider the cryptosystem (P, C, K, E, D) with key
K,
E and
D the encryption
and decryption rules, respectively. The given cryptosystem is said to be public-key (or
asymmetric-key), if for each key
K and encryption-decryption pair
depending on
K, it is computationally infeasible [Men96] (impossible for practical goals) to compute

knowing only
2.1 One-way and trapdoor functions

One-way functions are functions that are easily computable, but infeasible to invert (considering
the average-case complexity of inversion, rather than the worst case). Formally, a mapping
,
and
sets, is called one-way, if,
computationally infeasible, for essentially all of the elements

that
is easy to evaluate, but it is

, to find any
such
. [Men96]
Trapdoor functions are one-way functions
, for which, given an extra information
(called the trapdoor), it becomes feasible to determine an
for any
such that
. [Men96]
Although there are many contenders for the status of one-way function, the existence of one-way
mappings has neither been proven nor dismissed, remaining as an open conjecture in
cryptography theory. [wiki] The security of each of the public-key cryptosystems is based on the
presumption of ininvertibility of the one-way function the cryptosystem is built upon.
18
Some one-way (trapdoor) function candidates:
Integer Multiplication function (revealing the Integer Factorization Problem)

Let P be the set of all the prime numbers greater or equal to . Let
map, where
. Even for large primes
to compute
be a
, it is reasonably easy
, but determing the unique decomposition of a large
natural number
into the product of two distinct primes
is a hard
computational problem. The Integer Factorization Problem is at the foundation of most

of the one-way (trapdoor) functions utilized in public-key cryptography. Possible
trapdoor (trivial): one of the primes factoring the number n.
Example:
Let
and
both primes. Then,
. Such a number n is difficult to factor using pen-and-paper methods,

although any contemporary computer would find its unique decomposition in negligible
time. However, the computational cost required for factoring such a natural number
increases exponentially with its size (number of digits). In 2005, a computer network
employing 80 AMD Opteron processors needed several months to factorize a 663-bit
(roughly 200 decimal digit) number [wiki].
RSA encryption function (revealing the RSA Problem)

Let
distinct primes,
and (randomly) choose a natural odd number

Determine
. Compute
, such that
, with the property that
. Let
. [Cri06] Even when choosing large numbers

computation of
is rather forthright, while finding an
, such that
the number
and
, the
, given
and
is much harder to achieve. Possible trapdoor:

, then computing
as
. It has been asserted (although
not yet proven) that the computational difficulty of determining an inverse modulo
without knowing s decomposition into primes (the RSA Problem), is computationally

equivalent to the Integer Factorization Problem.
19
Fig.2.1 RSA encryption function
, for
and
Example:
Let
and
both primes,
Then,
and
. Given such a
number
, it is noticeably hard to determine the corresponding
, such that
Rabin encryption function (revealing the Modular Square Root Problem)

Let
. Even for a large
distinct primes,
. Let
and a large
straightforward, while determining an
, the computation of
given
is rather
, such that
is significantly more difficult. Possible trapdoor: one of the primes factoring

the number , which leads to a computationally feasible solution. The Modular Square
Root Problem is proven to be computationally equivalent to the Integer Factorization
Problem [Cri06].
20
Fig.2.2 Rabin encryption function
, for
Example:
Let
and
both primes,
and
. Then,
. Given such a number

, it is remarkably difficult to determine the corresponding
, such that
2.2 The Euclidean algorithms

The Euclidean algorithm represents a means of determining the gcd (greatest common divisor)
of two numbers
without requiring their factorization. The extended Euclidean
algorithm not only computes the gcd of two numbers
, it also finds
2.2.1 The Euclidean algorithm

The division algorithm: [Cri06]
such that
21
, such that
The Euclidean algorithm:

.
Example:
Compute
We have:
Therefore,
Computational algorithm:
Prototype: function Gcd(a, b) : result
Input: a, b
Output:
N, result =
Pseudocode:
if (a < b) then
temp := a
a := b
b := temp
endif
while (b > 0) do
r := a mod b
a := b
b:=r
endwhile
return a
22
2.2.2 The extended Euclidean algorithm

Bezouts identity [wiki]
and
, such that
Corollary to Bezouts identity [Cri06]

Let
. Then,
Example:
Determine u, v
, such that
Using a bottom-up approach to the solution of the example from the Euclidean algorithm, we
obtain:
Therefore,
and
Computational algorithm: [Cri06]

Prototype: function ExtendedEuclid(a, b) : (d, u, v)
Input: a, b
Output:
and
, such that
Pseudocode:
if (a < b) then
temp := a
a := b
b := temp
endif
u2 := 1; u1 := 0; v2 := 0; v1 := 1
23
while (b > 0) do
endwhile
d := a; u := u2; v := v2
return (d, u, v)
2.3 Modular arithmetic

Modular congruence: [Cri06]
Let
. Then,
A partition of a set
is a set of subsets of
, having the
following properties:
The relation is an equivalence relation on

. [Cri06]
modulo .
and its corresponding partition is

is called the set of congruence classes
is a commutative ring, where:
For convenience, we may use the standard notation , rather than , to denote the equivalence
class
of
Also, since
, we have
and the standard equality sign to denote the equivalence relation of

,
, we have
, we can safely assume that
, without restricting the generality of the problem.
24
2.3.1 Modular multiplicative inverses
Let
. Then, a number
, satisfying
is called the modular multiplicative inverse (or simply modular inverse) of

modulo .
Properties: [Cri06]
is invertible in
such that
which case
is a field every
is invertible
is prime
Determining a modular inverse:

Let
. Then,
such that:
Using the extended Euclidean algorithm, we can easily obtain
Example:
Determine the inverse of
The problem is successively equivalent to:
Applying the extended Euclidean algorithm, we get

Prototype: function ModularInverse(a, n) : u
Input:
Output:
25
, in
Pseudocode:
(d, u, v) := ExtendedEuclid(a, n)
if (u < 0) then
u := u + n
endif
return u
2.3.2 Modular congruence equations

Let us consider the basic modular congruence equation
, where
. Then:
if
, the equation has the unique solution
if
if
, the equation has no solutions
if
, the equation has the same general solution
equation
as the unique solution to the
and the solution
Example:
Solve the modular congruence equations:
1)
, therefore the solution to the equation is:
2)
, but, since
, the equation has no solutions
26
, for
3)
, and, since
, the equation is equivalent to
whose general solution is:

, thus, the final solution is:
Prototype: function ModularCongruence(a, b, n) : x
Input:
Output: either one of the following:
the unique solution
to the equation
(no solution)
the solution vector , with
, to the equation
Pseudocode:
d := gcd(a, n)
if (d = 1) then
x := (ModularInverse(a,n) * b) mod n
else if (b mod d
0) then
x :=
else
y := ModularCongruence
for k := 1 to d 1 do
:=
endfor
endif
return x
27
2.3.3 Modular congruences equations systems

The Chinese remainder theorem: [Cri06]
Consider the modular congruences equations system:
, where:
,
,
,
,
,
Then, the system has the unique solution
, where:
,
,
Example:
Solve the modular congruences equations system:
At first, we notice that
and
solvable. We now determine:
,
, for
28
, therefore the system is
Prototype: function ChineseRemainder(r, a, n) : (x, N)
Input:
vectors of size , with
Output:
(x, N), such that (x mod N) solves the system,

or
(no solution)
Pseudocode:
existsSolution := true
for i := 1 to r - 1 do
for j := i + 1 to r do
if (Gcd(
1) then
existsSolution := false
x :=
endif
endfor
endfor
if (existsSolution = true) then
N := 1
for i := 1 to r do
N := N *
endfor
x := 0
for i := 1 to r do
:=
:= ModularInverse( ,
x :=
mod N
endfor
endif
return (x, N)
29
2.3.4 Modular exponentiation
Computing numbers of the type
, can be very
time-consuming, using the traditional step-by-step multiplication (for e 1 multiplications) and

applying the modulo after each multiplication (for e 1 modulo operations). A more powerful
and time-conserving solution to this challenge is the repeated squaring modular
exponentiation method.
Applying the repeated squaring modular exponentiation method: [wiki]

1) Convert the exponent e to binary notation, that is write the exponent as
,
2) Using 1), write
3)
and
compute
4) Using 2) and 3), determine
Example:
Let
. Compute
Steps:
1)
2)
3)
30
4)
Computational algorithm: [Sch96]

Prototype: function ModularExponentiation(b, e, n) : result
Input: b, e, n
,n
Output: result
2, b < n
, result =
mod n
Pseudocode:
if (b = 0) then
result := 0
else if (e = 0) then
result := 1
else
while e > 0
if (e mod 2 = 1) then
result := (result * b) mod n
endif
e := e / 2
b := (b * b) mod n
endwhile
endif
return result
31
2.3.5 Modular square roots

A modular square root of a number
modulo ,
having the property
is a number ,
2.3.5.1 Quadratic residues

Consider the modular equation
if the equation has a solution (
.
satisfying it), then
is called a quadratic
residue modulo
if the equations lacks any solutions (
satisfying it), then
is called a
quadratic non-residue modulo
Legendre symbol: [Kob94]

Let
prime. We now introduce the Legendre symbol, denoted by
having the following definition:
Properties of the Legendre symbol: [Men96]

Let
primes.
1) Eulers criterion:
, thus:
2)
, hence
3)
4) Law of quadratic reciprocity:
32
Note: In order to decisively speed up the Legendre symbol calculation, instead of factoring the
number
into primes to be able to apply the law of quadratic reciprocity until the symbol
evaluates to
or
one could use Eulers criterion to determine the symbols value, relying
on the modular exponentiation algorithm.
Example:
1) Let
. Compute
Applying Eulers criterion, we have:
Using the modular exponentiation algorithm, we get:
Therefore,
is a quadratic non-residue modulo
modular equation
2) Let
does not have a solution.
. Compute
Applying Eulers criterion, we have:
Using the modular exponentiation algorithm, we get:
Therefore,
, proving that the
is a quadratic residue modulo
modular equation
does have a solution.
33
, certifying that the
Prototype: function ComputeLegendreSymbol(a, p) : result
N, p
Input: a, p
3, p prime
Output: result
, result =
Pseudocode:
if (a
p) then
a := a mod p
endif
expr := ModularExponentiation(a, (p - 1) / 2, p)
if (expr = p - 1)
result := -1
else
result := expr
endif
return result
Problem
Solve the following modular equation:
,
where
quadratic residue modulo .
2.3.5.2 Solving the equation
We already know that the equation
prime
has a solution
is a quadratic residue modulo . Since, in the ring
we have
,
the equation admits a second solution

clear that
, because
,
. Also, because
is odd, it becomes
, thus such an equation will always have two distinct solutions.
34
The solution depends on the choosing of the prime , allowing the next
cases:
1)
2)
3)
Case 1) - using the Tonelli-Shanks algorithm [Cri06]

1) Uniquely write
odd
2) Choose a random number
such that
residue modulo .
3) Compute
4) Compute
5) Determine
6) Compute
.
,
until
One solution is
Case 2) [wiki]
One solution is
Case 3) [Cri06]
One solution is
The other solution is
Examples:
Solve the following modular equations:
35
is a quadratic non-
a)
At first, we notice that the corresponding Legendre symbol
, therefore the
, we find ourselves in the 1st case
equation has a solution. Seeing that

of the problem.
1) Writing
2) Testing for quadratic non-residues modulo
is a quadratic non-residue modulo
3) Computing
4) Computing
5) Computing
6) Computing
The solutions to the equation are:
b)
We begin by noticing that the corresponding Legendre symbol
, hence the
, we find ourselves in the 2nd
equation has a solution. Observing that
case of the problem. Accordingly, the solutions to the equation are:
36
c)
We start by computing the corresponding Legendre symbol
, thus the equation
, we find ourselves in the 3rd case of
has a solution. Remarking that

the problem.
First, we compute
, consequently the
solutions to the equation are:
Prototype: function SolveCase1(a, p) : x
Input: a, p
, p
3, p prime,
, the equation
solutions
Output: one solution
to the equation
Pseudocode:
t := p - 1
s := 0
while (t mod 2 = 0) do
t := t / 2
s := s + 1
endwhile
d := 2
37
has
dFound := false
while ( (d < p) and (dFound = false) ) do
if (ComputeLegendreSymbol(d, p) = -1) then
dFound := true
else
d := d + 1
endif
endwhile
A := ModularExponentiation(a, t, p)
D := ModularExponentiation(d, t, p)
DInverse := ModularInverse(D, p)
k := 0
powerFound := false
while ( (k < Power(2, s - 1)) and (powerFound = false) ) do
if (ModularExponentiation(DInverse, 2 * k, p) = A) then
powerFound := true
else
k := k + 1
endif
endwhile
Dk := ModularExponentiation(D, k, p)
x := (ModularExponentiation(a, (t + 1) / 2, p) * Dk) mod p
return x
Prototype: function SolveEquationModP(a, p) : x
Input: a, p
, p
3, p prime, the equation
Output: the solution vector x = (x1, x2) to the equation

Pseudocode:
38
has solutions
, x1, x2
if (p mod 8 = 1) then
x1 := SolveCase1(a, p)
else
if ( (p mod 8 = 3) or (p mod 8 = 7) ) then
x1 := ModularExponentiation(a, (p + 1) / 4, p)
else
if (ModularExponentiation(a, (p - 1) / 4, p) = 1) then
x1 := ModularExponentiation(a, (p + 3) / 8, p)
else
x1 := ( (2 * a) * ModularExponentiation((4 * a), (p - 5) / 8, p) ) mod p
endif
endif
endif
x2 := p - x1
return x = (x1, x2)
prime,
The starting point for solving such an equation is knowing the solution to the equation
. Consider
one of the solutions of the previous modular equation. We then
apply the following algorithm:
one solution is
one solution is
chosen such that
(depending on
) satisfies the equation
one solution is
,
chosen such that
(depending on
39
) satisfies the equation
Therefore, the previously-stated algorithm has at most

the equation
solution
steps, considering the solution to
known from the beginning. The final solution, depending on the

and on
for
, is:
Example:
Solve the modular equation
We know from the preceding examples that one solution to the equation
is
. Let us begin the algorithm to determine the solution to the equation

.
one solution is:
one solution is:

,
for
The solutions to the equation
are:
Prototype: function SolveEquationModPT(a, t, p) : x
Input: a, t, p
,t
2, p
3, p prime, the equation
Output: the solution vector (x[t, 1], x[t, 2]) to the equation
x[t, 1], x[t, 2]
Pseudocode:
40
has solutions
),
(x[1,1], x[1,2]) := SolveEquationModP(a, p)

currentPower := p
modularPower := p * p
index := 2
while (index
t) do
k := 0
kFound := false
while ( (k < p) and (kFound = false) ) do
possibleValue := x[index - 1, 1] + k * currentPower
if (ModularExponentiation(possibleValue, 2, modularPower) = a) then
x[index, 1] := possibleValue
kFound := true
else
k := k + 1
endif
endwhile
x[index, 2] := modularPower - x[index, 1]
currentPower := modularPower
modularPower := modularPower * p
index := index + 1
endwhile
return (x[t,1], x[t,2])

Let
composite
be a set of primes, such that
. Then, solving this
type of equation is reduced to:

1) Verifying that, for each equation
modulo
, otherwise the equation
2) Finding the solution
is a quadratic residue
does not have a solution.

to each equation
41
3) Determining the solution
to each equation
where
4) Obtaining the final solution modulo
previous solutions
distinct solutions, in fact), by merging all the
to the equations
, using the Chinese Remainder Theorem.
Example:
Find the solution to the modular equation
1) We now check if the following equations are solvable:

. Since
, the
, the
equation has a solution

. Because
equation admits a solution
2) We now move on to solving the equations:
has the solution
(solved
at a previous example)
. Since
, one solution of the equation
is
Hence, the solution to this equation is
3) Seeing that, in our case,
4) There are
, we may skip this step.
systems of equations to be solved using the Chinese Remainder
Theorem, each having one solution. The solution to our main equation is the union of
these
separate solutions.
The general system is:

,
42
By applying the Chinese Remainder Theorem on this system, we obtain successively:
We now solve the
equations systems, by replacing
with their concrete values, respectively.
43
and
in the general solution of
The final solution to the equation is:
Prototype: procedure BackTrackSolutionsModN(m, n, x, equationIndex, solutionIndex,
xFinal)
Input:
a set of primes such that
vector of size (m, 2), with x[i,1], x[i,2]
, x[i,1], x[i,2]
is the solution vector to the equations
equationIndex is the index of the equation generating a solution
solutionIndex is the index of the solution inside the vector xFinal
Output: the solution vector xFinal of size
, xFinal[j]
, xFinal[j] < n,
Pseudocode:
if (equationIndex > m) then
xFinal[solutionIndex] := ChineseRemainder(m, solution, n);
solutionIndex := solutionIndex + 1
else
for i := 1 to 2 do
solution[equationIndex] := x[equationIndex, i]
call BackTrackSolutionsModN(m, n, x, equationIndex + 1, solutionIndex, xFinal)
endfor
endif
44
,x
Prototype: function SolveEquationModN(m, n, x) : xFinal
Input:
a set of primes such that

vector of size (m, 2), with x[i,1], x[i,2]
, x[i,1], x[i,2]
,x
is the solution vector to the equations

Output: the solution vector xFinal of size
, xFinal[j]
, xFinal[j] < n,
Pseudocode:
solutionIndex := 1
call BackTrackSolutionsModN(m, n, x, 1, solutionIndex, xFinal)
return xFinal
2.4 Primality testing methods

A primality test is an algorithm used to determine whether or not a given number
is prime. It is important to distinguish between primality testing and integer factorization

testing. Although in the case of nave primality tests, the integer factorization is implicit,
competent primality tests do not involve the decomposition (if any) of the candidate prime into
its proper factors.
Types of primality tests: [wiki]

nave (inefficient deterministic methods) - trial division, Sieve of Eratosthenes
slow deterministic methods (requiring exponential time) - cyclotomy test, elliptic curve
primality test
fast deterministic methods (requiring polynomial time) - AKS primality test [Agr04]
probabilistic methods (requiring polynomial time) - Fermat, Solovay-Strassen, MillerRabin primality tests
For cryptography purposes, the fastest and most efficient primality tests are the probabilistic ones
(with the Miller-Rabin test being the most effective), their downside residing in the fact that,
regardless of the number of test iterations applied on the candidate prime, the candidate number
45
cannot be proven to be prime with 100% confidence, although its compositeness (if any) can be
established with absolute certainty.
2.4.1 Fermat primality test

Let
and
. The map
Eulers totient function. [Cri06]

Eulers totient function properties: [Cri06]
1) if
2) if p is prime,
3) if
4) if
, p prime,
,
Fig.2.3 Eulers totient function
46
is called
Euler totient theorem [Sta05]

Let
, then
Fermats little theorem [Men96]

Let
prime and
. Fermats little theorem is a
. Then,
particular case of Eulers totient theorem, in which
is a prime number, and, by applying the
property 2) of Eulers totient function, we obtain
Fermats primality test

Let
Let
. If
, then
odd and composite,
is prime.
. Then,
. [Men96] Put slightly differently,
is said to be pseudoprime to the base , if

is a number pretending to be prime, by
passing the Fermat test for a given base . The probability of a composite number
Fermats tests for
different bases
is at most
passing
. [Cri06] After passing 6 different
Fermats tests, the probability that the tested number is prime is at least
A defining weakness of Fermats test are the Carmichael numbers. A natural composite number
is called a Carmichael number, if it passes Fermats test for any base . It has been proven that,
for a large-enough , the number of Carmichael numbers less than
is greater than
, and, as a
consequence to this fact, that the set of Carmichael numbers is infinite [Men96].
Distinguishing the Carmichael numbers

Let
odd and composite. Let
be a set of primes, such that
.
if
, for some
if
and
, then
is not a Carmichael number
, for every
47
, then
is a Carmichael number
Carmichael number example:

Let
. Let
, such that
and
. Also,
. Therefore,
is a Carmichael number.
Fermats primality test example:

Let
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
has passed Fermats
Seeing that, for 6 bases of our choosing, the number

primality test, we can conclude that
is a prime, with a probability of at least
Let
1)
failed Fermats primality test for the base
The number
conclude that
, therefore we can
is not a prime, with complete confidence.

Prototype: function FermatTest(n, k) : res
Input: n
N, n
3, k
Output: res
, corresponding to
complete certainty) or prime

Pseudocode:
for i :=1 to k do
Randomly choose a, 1 < a < n - 1
result := ModularExponentiation(a, n - 1, n)
48
being either composite (with
if (result
1) then
return COMPOSITE
endif
endfor
return PRIME
2.4.2 Miller-Rabin primality test

Let
be a prime number,
,
. Uniquely write
as
odd. Let
odd. Let
. Then, either:
or
, for some
[Men96]
Miller-Rabin primality test

Let
be an odd number,
,
. Uniquely express
as
. If either:
or
, for some
then
is prime.
A natural composite number

pseudoprime to the base
, if either
or
. Regarded from a distinct perspective,

the Miller-Rabin test for a given base
passing the Miller-Rabin test for
odd, is said to be strong

, for some
is a number acting as a prime, by passing
. The maximum probability of a composite number
different bases
is
[Cri06]. After passing 3
different Miller-Rabin tests, the probability that the tested number is prime is at least
.
49
Miller-Rabin primality test example:
Let
1)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
2)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
3)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Observing that our number

bases, we can infer that
has passed the Miller-Rabin test for 3 different

is a prime, with a probability of at least
Let
1)
1.
50
2.
Seeing that our number
can claim that
has failed the Miller-Rabin test for the base
, we
is not a prime, with complete confidence.

Prototype: function MillerRabinTest(n, k) : res
Input: n
N, n
3, k
Output: res
, corresponding to
complete certainty) or prime

Pseudocode:
Write
, r,s
, r odd
for i :=1 to k do
Randomly choose a, 1 < a < n - 1
result := ModularExponentiation(a, r, n)
if ( (result
1) and (result
n - 1) ) then
j :=1
while ( (j
s - 1) and (result
n - 1) ) do
result := (result * result) mod n

if (result
1) then
return COMPOSITE
endif
j := j + 1
endwhile
if (result
n - 1) then
return COMPOSITE
endif
endif
endfor
return PRIME
51
being either composite (with
2.4.3 The Miller-Rabin test vs. Fermats test

Correctness. The Miller-Rabin test is a significant improvement over Fermats test in
terms of correctness, since, unlike Fermats, it does not contain a characteristic weakness
regarding a particular type of numbers (like Fermats Carmichael numbers) that would
render the test completely ineffective for that category of numbers.
Speed. The Miller-Rabin average-case amount of computations is much smaller than

Fermats, becoming approximatively equal to Fermats amount of computations only for
the worst-case.
The algorithms for both tests employ operations of the same computational
complexity.
Both tests can determine composite numbers with absolute certainty. Since the set
of strong liars (bases for which a given composite number
passes the Miller-
Rabin test) is a narrow subset of the set of Fermat liars (bases for which a given
composite number
passes Fermats test), the Miller-Rabin test generally requires
a smaller amount of bases, to be tested against a number
in order to prove its
compositeness, than Fermats.

Fermat liars for
strong liars for
Fig. 2.4 Relationship between the Fermat and the strong liars for any composite
number
52
[Men96]
The probability that a natural number

dependent on the amount
is a prime, is, for both tests, directly
of bases tested against
probability of a number being prime is at least

and at least
. However, since the

for the Miller-Rabin test
for Fermats test, it becomes clear that the Miller-Rabin test
requires only half of the bases Fermats test would need in order to achieve the
same confidence on the primality of .
53
Chapter 3 Public-Key Cryptosystems
CHAPTER 3 - PUBLIC-KEY CRYPTOSYSTEMS

This chapter introduces the RSA and the Rabin public-key cryptosystems, describing their keygeneration, encryption and decryption algorithms, covering their implementation options,
security issues and real-world applicability, as well as outlining similarities and differences
between the two cryptosystems.
3.1 The RSA cryptosystem

The RSA cryptosystem was first published in 1977, as the joint effort of Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir
and Leonard Adleman from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. [wiki]
3.1.1 Description [Men96]

Key generation
Summary: Entity
generates the keys required for the encryption and decryption processes.
1) Generate two random and distinct prime numbers,
and , having roughly the same size.
2) Compute:
, where
represents Eulers totient
function.
3) Select a random number
4) Determine
, such that
, such that
.
5) The keys are:
the public key:
the private key:
54
.
, that is
Encryption
Summary: Entity
encrypts a message
1) Receive the public key
, using the public key
from .
2) Express the message plaintext as a number

3) Compute
4) Send the ciphertext
received from entity .
to .
Decryption
Summary: Entity
decrypts the encrypted message
1) Receive the ciphertext
received from , using the private key .
from .
2) Recover the message plaintext, by computing
Reliability of the decryption algorithm

We need to prove that
. Since
and
are primes,
, it is
enough to prove that:
.
Because
such that
We now demonstrate that
. The subsequent proof is split into the following
cases:
if
being prime, it is clear that
is a multiple of , therefore
and, consequently,
if
, we apply Fermats theorem and obtain

.
The same reasoning can be applied analogously for proving that
55
3.1.2 Encryption-decryption example

Formalization of the RSA cipher:
P=C=
, K=
Example:
correspondence:
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
The plaintext
is split into blocks of length , while the ciphertext is divided into blocks
of length , fulfilling the condition
Encryption:
Plaintext: rsa
Splitting: rs / a_
rs
a_
Encryption (using
):
56
Ciphertext: _MBAQG
_MB
AQG
Decryption:
Ciphertext: _MBAQG
Splitting: _MB / AQG
_MB
AQG
Decryption (using
):
Plaintext: rsa
rs
a_
3.1.3 The security of the RSA cryptosystem

1) The factoring problem [Men96]
An adversary wanting to decrypt a ciphertext message
knowing only the public key
into the plaintext message
is faced with the RSA problem. Such an opponent
must try to:

factor
in order to determine
and, consequently, . Up to now, there is no
efficient algorithm for determining the proper factors of a given composite

number.
or
if, as an extra acquired information, the opponent also knows the decryption
exponent , he/she can easily factor
as follows:
because
57
, for certain
since
, due to Eulers totient theorem, we
have
determine the unique
then,
,
,
, such that
odd
, such that, for at least half of the numbers

,
and
after finding a number , satisfying the previous relations for a single

chosen number
, a proper factor of
is revealed as
Usage: The opponent selects random numbers
until
the conditions above are fulfilled. The expected number of trials until
is
factored is .
2) Small encryption exponent
[Men96]
In order to speed up the encryption process (by reducing the amount of operations
involved), one can select a small encryption exponent
to be used for each encryption.
However, let us consider the case in which the same plaintext message
sent to
destinations using the same encryption exponent , but

,
. An eavesdropper intercepting
messages out of the
is encrypted is
distinct moduli
sent messages is
faced with the following system:

, where
One notices that, in most of the real-life situations,
By applying the Chinese remainder theorem, one obtains a solution

. Since
and, as such,
, with
, one can reach the plaintext message
simply by extracting the integer -th order root of .
58
There are two solutions to this issue:

refraining from using small encryptions exponents, like
, in favor of larger
ones, an usual choice being

salting the message
, that is appending a distinct and appropriately long
pseudorandom bitstream, prior to each encryption modulo
3) Forward search attack

If a ciphertext message
is very short and/or predictable, an eavesdropper can decrypt it
simply by encrypting all possible plaintext messages
, until
is obtained. Such an attack
can be prevented by salting the message, prior to its encryption.
4) Small decryption exponent
[Cri06]
If
is a small number (the most natural case) and
the size of the decryption exponent
is less than
of the size of the modulus , there
exists an algorithm through which the decryption exponent

only the public key
can be determined knowing
Such a situation can be avoided by choosing at first the decryption exponent

, such that
size of the modulus
and
s number of digits exceeds
,
of the
and only afterwards determine the encryption exponent
, such that
, that is
5) Adaptive chosen ciphertext attack [Cri06]

Let
be plaintext messages, whose correspondent ciphertexts are
that
. We know
Let us assume that an opponent desires to decrypt the cyphertext
having access to the decryption equipment for a timespan and being able to decrypt any
chosen ciphertext, other than
itself, without posessing the decryption key . This attack
allows the adversary to select a random number

59
, conceal the ciphertext
as
and present it to the decryption machine. In turn, the decryption

machine provides the opponent with
, out of
which the adversary determines the plaintext message
as
To prevent such attacks, some structural constraints should be placed upon the plaintext
messages. If a decrypted plaintext
encryption
violates any of the imposed constraints, its
should be flagged as fraudulent and rejected by the decryption machine.
6) Common modulus attack [Cri06]

If a central trusted authority designates a single public key modulus
encryption-decryption exponent pair
and one distinct
for each entity in a network, the following
situations may arise:

any entity in the network can easily factor , since knowing the private key
a public-key pair
allows the user to easily factor
then to determine each private key
for
(as shown at 1)) and
in the network
an opponent outside the network who intercepts a message
being encrypted and
sent to at least two different entities has a change to decrypt the message as
follows:
If
, then, using the corollary to the extended Euclidean theorem,
we get
, for some
. Hence, we have:
Because, with a high probability,
, an eavesdropper is almost
always able to decrypt the plaintext
, without requiring knowledge of the private
keys
Both of the previously presented situations can be avoided by providing each entity in the
network with a unique modulus .
60
7) Cycling attacks [Cri06]

Let
be a ciphertext. Since an encryption is, in fact, a permutation on the
message space
,
. As such, finding a
private key
such that
and, consequently,
for which
means obtaining the
To mount such an attack, an eavesdropper should successively compute

until
. However, this algorithm can be viewed as a factorization algorithm,
and, as any factorization algorithm to this day, needs exponential time to succeed.
Therefore, for a sufficiently large modulo , this type of attack does not push a problem
to RSA.
8) Message concealing [Men96]

A message
may be considered unconcealed if
choosing of the modulus
. Regardless of the
and the encryption exponent
unconcealed messages (
). If
and
chosen at random or is a small number ( or
, there are always some
are random primes and if
is either
), then the proportion of
these unconcealed messages is negligibly small, so they do not pose a threat to the
security of RSA.
3.1.4 Guidelines to a successful RSA implementation

The size of the modulus
should be of at least 1024 bits (128 bytes), in order to avoid its
factorization into primes. Considering the rapid improvement in computer technology,

using even the previously-considered suitable 768 bit (96 bytes) modulus has become a
rather risky enterprise.
The primes
and , whose product is the modulus , should be of roughly the same size,
but extra care must be taken that
is not very small, otherwise
61
could be factored by
trial division by all the natural numbers close to
. Random choosing of
and
generally eliminates this problem.

To thwart any non-brute-force attempt to guess the prime numbers
and
used to factor
the modulus , the random prime generation should be intractable. The best solution to
this would be using a true random generator (such as a device to measure the radioactive
decay of uranium atoms).
To avoid salting the message
(required when using small encryption exponents like
), one could use a somewhat larger, but still computation-wise efficient encryption
exponent (like
, which only requires
modular squarings and one
modular multiplication).
If, due to the choosing of the encryption exponent
has the size less than
selection of
, the decryption exponent
of the size of the modulus
and, subsequently, of finding its inverse
must be repeated until
appropriate size, or a sufficiently large decryption exponent

the encryption exponent
The size of the message
computed as
, then, either the

is of
shall be chosen at first, and
should be large enough, in order to foil attempts to extract the
integer -th order root of
, that is:
may be increased through salting to reach the required length.
Although speed in not quite the concern for RSA as it is for symmetric-key
cryptosystems, efficient polynomial-time algorithms should be used for all the operations
involved in the process:
key generation - the Miller-Rabin primality test (to check if a randomly

generated number is prime) (see 2.4.2), the extended Euclidean algorithm
(to compute the decryption exponent
exponent
modulo
) (see 2.3.1)
62
as the inverse of the encryption
encryption
and
decryption
the
repeated
exponentiation method (to compute
squaring
modular
or
(see 2.3.4)
3.2 The Rabin cryptosystem

The Rabin cryptosystem specifications were published in January 1979 by Michael Rabin, in an
effort to improve the already existing RSA cryptosystem, by presenting a cryptographic solution
whose security was mathematically proven to be based on the difficulty of the integer
factorization problem.
3.2.1 Description [Men96]

Key generation
Summary: Entity
generates the keys required for the encryption and decryption processes.
and , of roughly the same size.
2) Compute
3) The keys are:
the public key:
the private key:
Encryption
Summary: Entity
encrypts a message
1) Receive the public key
from .
2) Express the message plaintext as a number

3) Compute
4) Send the ciphertext
to .
63
Decryption
Summary: Entity
decrypts the encrypted message
received from
, using the private key
.
1) Receive the ciphertext
from .
2) Recover the 4 message plaintexts
satisfying
(see section 2.3.5)

3) Discern which of the 4 message plaintexts
message
resembles the original
3.2.2 Encryption-decryption example (without use of redundancy)

Formalization of the Rabin cipher (without redundancy):
P=C=
, K=
, such that
Example:
correspondence:
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
The plaintext
is split into blocks of length , while the ciphertext is divided into blocks
of length , fulfilling the condition
Encryption:
Plaintext: rabin
Splitting: rab / in_
64
rab
in_
Encryption (using
):
Ciphertext: _QAE_LFN
_QAE
_LFN
Decryption:
Ciphertext: _QAE_LFN
Splitting: _QAE / _LFN
_QAE
_LFN
Decryption (using
):
4 possible roots:
4 possible roots:
Plaintext: rabin
rab
in_
3.2.3 Use of redundancy

The most obvious drawback of the Rabin cryptosystem in comparison to RSA is the ambiguity of
the decryption, the user being faced with choosing which of the four decryption possibilities is, in
fact, the initially encrypted message. One can alleviate this issue by adding a redundancy to the
message prior to its encryption and, after decryption, checking which of the four possible values
matches the redundancy.
65
More formally, let us consider the initial message

, where
, written in the base
are the
redundancy to the message
, one adds ,
matching the last digits of
as follows:
digits of
in the base
as
. To add a
digits to the end of the representation of
before replication:
after replicating the last digits of
Put differently, one observes that replicating the last digits of the representation of
(adding a
-digit size redundancy) can be seen as:

,
where
is the message before replication and
is the message after its last
digits were
replicated.
After the redundancy has been added to
, the message is encrypted as usually as
. When the decryption is performed, the user can easily distinguish which of the four
messages
is the message
, by selecting the only message of the four with
matching redundancy. After the solution has been found, the redundancy is removed as follows:
,
where
is the initial message, prior to the applying of the redundancy, while
is the message
with corresponding redundancy, obtained through decryption.
Note:
1) To ensure that only one of the messages
has matching redundancy, the
added redundancy should be long enough to avoid ambiguity. Todays standards impose a
redundancy of at least 64 bits.
2) To allow the use of redundancy, the initial message
must be small enough to
accommodate a -digit replication, that is:

, where
If the initial message
and
is the size of the modulus
is too long for such a purpose, it can be split into two messages
, for which, individually, the redundancy adding is applicable.
66
3.2.4 Encryption-decryption example (with use of redundancy)

Formalization of the Rabin cipher (with redundancy):
P=C=
, K=
the message
is padded with its redundancy
, such that
and the redundancy matches
the redundancy is removed from the solution
Example:
correspondence:
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
redundancy of
decimal digits
The initial plaintext
is split into blocks of length , while the ciphertext is divided into
blocks of length , fulfilling the conditions:
Encryption:
Plaintext: rabin
Splitting: ra / bi / n_
ra
bi
n_
Adding the replication ( decimal digits):

67
Encryption (using
):
Ciphertext: EOYPBFZMETJH
EOYP
BFZM
ETJH
Decryption:
Ciphertext: EOYPBFZMETJH
Splitting: EOYP / BFZM / ETJH
EOYP
BFZM
ETJH
Decryption (using
):
4 possible roots:
is
the only value to match the replication
4 possible roots:
is the
is the
only value to match the replication
4 possible roots:
only value to match the replication
Plaintext: rabin
ra
bi
n_
68
3.2.5 The security of the Rabin cryptosystem

1) The factoring problem
An opponent desiring to decrypt a ciphertext message
into the plaintext message
knowing only the public key , is faced with the modular square root problem. The
only known efficient algorithm to determine
out of the equation
requires s decomposition into primes and, as such, the modular square root problem is
equivalent in terms of difficulty to the integer factorization problem.
2) Small encryption exponent

Let us consider the highly probable situation (much more so than in the case of RSA) in
which the same plaintext message
moduli
is encrypted is sent to
. An eavesdropper intercepting
entities, using
distinct
messages out of the
sent
messages is faced with the following system:

, where
We can remark that, in most of the real-life situations,

Chinese remainder theorem, one obtains a solution
and, as such,
. By applying the
, with
, one can reach the plaintext message
. Since
simply by
extracting the integer square root of .
There is but a single workaround to this situation, namely salting the message
, that is
appending a distinct and appropriately long pseudorandom bitstream, prior to each

encryption modulo
3) Forward search attack

As in the case of RSA, a ciphertext message
that is very short and/or predictable can be
decrypted by an opponent simply by encrypting all possible plaintext messages
, until
is obtained. Such an attack is generally not an issue to the Rabin cryptosystem, as the
salting of messages prior to their encryption is mandatory (see also 2)).
69
4) Chosen ciphertext attack [Men96]

To be able to mount such an attack, an opponent having access to the decryption machine
(but not to the decryption key) encrypts a plaintext
ciphertext
as
and sends the
to the decryption machine. Two situations may arise, following the previous
assumption:
The decryption machine returns all of the four possible plaintexts
. The opponent searches for a plaintext
having the property
message
out of the four retrieved plaintexts,
. Irrespective of the modulus or the initial
, there are always two plaintexts satisfying the aforementioned
property. Then, a proper factor of the modulus
is obtained as
The decryption machine returns only one (probably the smallest root) of the four
possible plaintexts, namely the plaintext
property
. If the received plaintext fulfills the
, then a proper factor of the modulus
determined as
. If
can be
, then the process of
encrypting a chosen plaintext and sending it to the decryption machine to be

decrypted is repeated, until
can be factored.
To deter such attacks from being successful, it is enough for the decryption machine to
request the existence of a redundancy in any plaintext
, prior to its encryption.
If the redundancy has indeed been added to the plaintext

corresponding ciphertext
, the decryption of its
provides the eavesdropper with merely the same
plaintext that he/she encrypted.

If the redundancy has not been added by the adversary, the machine fails to
distinguish the correct plaintext and disregards the ciphertext submitted as
fraudulent or damaged.
5) Adaptive chosen ciphertext attack

Let
be plaintext messages, whose correspondent ciphertexts are
that
70
. It is known
Assuming that an opponent who has access to the decryption equipment for a period of
time desires to decrypt the cyphertext
chosen ciphertext, other than
random number
, while being able to decrypt any
itself. This attack permits the opponent to choose a
, conceal the ciphertext
as
and forward it
to the decryption machine. In return, the decryption machine gives the opponent the
decryption of , that is
, out of which the opponent computes the
plaintext message
. For this type of attack to succeed, the use of
as
redundancy to distinguish between the four roots of the modular squaring equation is
necessary.
To avoid such attacks, some structural constraints should be placed upon the plaintext
messages. If a decrypted plaintext
encryption
violates any of the imposed constraints, its
should be regarded as fraudulent and rejected by the decryption machine.
6) Message concealing
A message
shall be regarded as unconcealed if
. Regardless of the
choosing of the modulus , there are always some unconcealed messages (

and
). If
are random primes, then the number of these unconcealed messages is
insignificantly small, posing no real threat to the security of the Rabin cryptosystem.
3.2.6 Guidelines to a successful Rabin implementation

A size of the modulus
of trying to factor
of at least 1024 bits is recommended to render brute-force attacks

useless. Since Rabins security is based on the difficulty of the
factorization of large integers, the constraints regarding the size of the modulus are the
same as in the case of RSA.
As in the case of RSA, some care must be taken when choosing the primes
whose product is the modulus .
should not be very small, otherwise
and
and ,
ought to be of roughly the same size, but
could be factored by trial division by all the natural
71
numbers close to
. Random choosing of
and
eliminates this problem for most of
the situations.
Considering the significant amount of extra decryption computations (the Tonelli-Shanks
algorithm - see 2.3.5.2) when using a modulus
with a prime factor
, the
random prime generation algorithm should eliminate primes having such a form.
To impede any non-brute-force attempt to guess the prime numbers
and
factoring the
modulus , the random prime generation should be intractable. The best answer to this
issue would be relying on a true random generator (such as a device to measure the
atmospheric noise at a given time).
Any message plaintext that is to be encrypted using the Rabin cryptosystem should have a
redundancy of at least 64 bits in order to be able to easily discern between the four
message plaintexts obtained at decryption, so that no more than one message has the
expected redundancy.
Although not a general issue to the RSA, salting any message (regardless of its initial
length) is of the utmost importance to the security of the Rabin cryptosystem, since, more
often than not, the same message
using different moduli
can be encrypted and sent to at least two destinations,
(see 3.2.5.2)). In this case the salt must not necessarily be
random, but differ for each modulus
. A good size for the mandatory salt of any Rabin-
encrypted message would be 64 bits.

(after the redundancy and the compulsory salt have been
added) should be large enough, in order to make attempts to extract the integer square
root of
impossible, that is:
may be increased through extra salting, for it to reach the
required length.
72
Even if speed might be regarded as a second-rate concern to the Rabin cryptosystem (as
public-key cryptography is much slower than symmetric-key cryptography, anyway),
efficient polynomial-time algorithms ought to be used for all the operations involved in
the process:
key generation - the Miller-Rabin primality test (to check if a randomly

generated number is prime) (see 2.4.2)
decryption - the algorithm for solving a modular squaring equation,

depending on the decomposition of the modulus
into its proper factors
(see 2.3.5)
3.3 Applications of the RSA and the Rabin cryptosystems

It is widely known that public-key cryptography came into play to address the two most
significant flaws of symmetric-key cryptography:
key distribution issue - Prior to being able to communicate securely over insecure
channels (by using data encryption), the participants were forced to rely on the exchange
of the encryption-decryption keys using secure channels, other than the ones used for the
actual communication.
authentication problem - Symmetric-key cryptography did not provide any means of

authenticating the parties involved in the communication, neither did it offer any insight
as to the data integrity of the transmitted message.
However, since the public-key cryptosystems are several orders of magnitude (hundreds of times,
to be computationally precise) slower than symmetric-key cryptosystems, public-key
cryptosystems cannot actually supersede the symmetric-key ones. As such, the role of public-key
cryptography is restricted to providing auxiliary support to existing symmetric-key
cryptosystems. Consequently, the real-life applications of public-key cryptography might be
resumed as follows:
73
encryption of small amounts of data - The large disparity in terms of speed between the
public-key cryptography and its symmetric-key counterpart becomes non-essential when
small amounts of data are to be encrypted and decrypted. If such data is subjected to
transmission over an unsecured connection, then public-key cryptography (like RSA or
Rabin) becomes the only reasonable choice. Such situations mainly involve banking
transactions over the Internet, when the user provides the transactions front-end (the
website) with his/her confidential banking account (or credit card) credentials.
exchange of keys of symmetric-key cryptosystems - A central authority of a computer

network, be it either a LAN (local area network) or a virtual network (built of computers
connected over the Internet), might deem necessary to distribute a common symmetrickey cryptosystem key (like an AES key) to all of its subjects. Such a key would then be
used for securing (by encrypting) any future communication between the parties in that
network. Although in its later stages, such a scenarios success would only depend on the
security of the symmetric-key cryptosystem involved, until the symmetric-key reaches
each of its desired destinations, the scenarios security depends heavily on the public-key
cryptosystem used. The steps required for such an undertaking are:
The central authority generates a symmetric-key cryptography key
to be used
for any secure data exchange between the parties of the network.
Each protagonist (party)
in the network (other than the central
authority itself) generates its own public-key cryptography key (containing a

public-key and a private key), using a previously agreed-upon cryptosystem.
Every participant
, then sends its public-key to the central authority over the
unsecured channel.
The central authority encrypts the same plaintext
(the symmetric-key
cryptosystem key) using every available public key received from the parties,
obtaining the distinct ciphertexts ,
74
The central authority then sends each ciphertext
to its corresponding
destination, again over the unsecured channel.
Each participant
, having received its ciphertext
distinct private key, obtaining the message
, decrypts it using its own
(the symmetric-key cryptosystem
key sent).
At this point all the parties involved are in possession of the symmetric-key
cryptosystem key (whose security remains intact, due to the use of public-key
cryptography for its transmission) and are able to rely on it to secure each future
data exchange over the network.
digital signatures - Signatures are used for two purposes: the authentication beyond any
doubt of the parties involved in the communication (also the non-repudiation of any
messages sent) and the integrity check of the corresponding messages.
3.3.1 Digital signatures explained

A signature is a 5-tuple (P, A, K, S, W), having the following properties: [Sti95]
P is a finite set of possible messages
A is a finite set of possible signatures
K is a finite set of possible keys (the keyspace)
S is a finite set of possible signing functions
W is a finite set of possible verification functions
K, there are:
a signing function
: P A,
a verification function
: (P
S
A)
a fundamental constraint:
,
75
P,
Due to the time constraints involved in message encryption and decryption as well as bandwidth
limitations, the signing function
is not applied to the whole message
transmitted, but to the hash of the message
, that is
that is to be
3.3.1.1 Hash functions

A hash function
is a transformation that takes a variable-size input
output string, namely the hash value
and returns a fixed-size
Properties of the hash functions: [Cri06]

the input message
can be of any length
the output hash
is of fixed, predetermined length
is a one-way function, without any possible trapdoors (see 2.1)

must be collision-free:
weak collision-free - given a message , it is computationally infeasible to find a

message ,
, such that
strong collision-free - it is computationally infeasible to find any two messages

and , such that
Hash functions, of which the most used today are MD5 and SHA-1, are employed to ensure
message integrity in areas such as cryptography, web downloads integrity and peer-to-peer
networking.
3.3.1.2 Digital signing template

Suppose two entities identified, for the sake of simplicity, as Alice and Bob desire to
communicate and their only means of communication involves an unsecured channel (like a
telephone line, the Internet, e-mail, etc.). Let us assume that Alice desires to send an encrypted
message to Bob and, as such, beyond the actual message decryption, Bob is faced with two
additional challenges:
76
authentication - ensuring that the received message came indeed from Alice and not
from an intruder
integrity - certifying that the message has neither been damaged, nor forged, during its
transmission over the channel
Let us assume that the message
had already been sent by Alice and received by Bob and whose
secure transmission was achieved using a cryptosystem of the protagonists choice (public-key or
symmetric-key). The following template chronologically details the steps required for a
successful digital signing and signature verification of the message involved in the
aforementioned transmission:
1) Alice generates her public-key cryptosystem key to be used for the message signing.
2) Alice sends the public key part of the generated key to Bob.
3) Alice uses a hash function
(like MD5), whose implementation is also available to Bob,
to create the constant-sized hash
of the message
that she is willing to send
to Bob.
4) Alice encrypts the hash
using the private-key part of her message signing key,
effectively obtaining the digital signature of the message
5) Alice sends the digital signature to Bob.

6) Bob decrypts the digital signature provided by Alice, using the public-key part of Alices
message signing key, obtaining Alices hash of the message
7) Bob applies the same hash function
as Alice on the message
, obtaining his own hash
.
8) Bob compares the hash
(that he computed) with Alices hash
(that he previously
decrypted). If there is a match, than Bob becomes certain that the message
came
indeed from Alice and that it has not been damaged or forged. If not, then either the
message did not come from Alice, but from an opponent, or the message came from
Alice, but was damaged or forged during the transmission, or a mixture of these
situations. Either way, if there has been no match, Bob clearly knows that the message he
obtained is not reliable.
77
3.3.1.3 The RSA signature scheme

We assume that entity A (Alice) signs the message and that entity B (Bob) verifies the signature.
Key generation [Men96]

Summary: Entity
generates the keys required for the digital signing and signature verification
processes.
2) Compute:
represents Eulers totient
, where
function.
3) Select a random number
4) Determine
, such that
, such that
, that is
.
5) The keys are:
the public key:
the private key:
Digital signing
Summary: Entity
digitally signs the message
1) Compute
message
, using its own private key .
, where
is an integer representing the hash of the
, obtained by applying a hash function (like MD5 or SHA-1) agreed upon with
entity .
2) Compute the signature
3) Send the digital signature to .
Signature verification
Summary: Entity
verifies the digital signature

78
received from , using the public key
1) Receive the digital signature from entity .

2) Obtain s hash
, by decrypting the digital signature.
3) Compute its own hash
of the message
, using the same hash
function as entity .
4) Verify if
message
, otherwise dismiss the signature
as fraudulent and deem the
unreliable.
3.3.1.4 The Rabin signature scheme

As in the case of the RSA signature scheme, we assume that entity A (Alice) signs the message
and that entity B (Bob) verifies the signature.
Key generation [Men96]

Summary: Entity
generates the keys required for the digital signing and signature verification
processes.
2) Compute
3) The keys are:
the public key:
the private key:
Digital signing
Summary: Entity
1) Compute
message
digitally signs the message

,
, using its own private key
, where
is an integer representing the hash of the
, obtained by applying a hash function (like MD5 or SHA-1) agreed upon with
entity .
2) Compute the signature
, where
3) Send the digital signature to .
79
(see 2.3.5.4).
Signature verification
Summary: Entity
verifies the digital signature
received from

1) Receive the digital signature from entity .
2) Obtain s hash as
, by decrypting the digital signature.
3) Compute its own hash
of the message
, using the same hash
function as entity .
4) Verify if
message
, otherwise dismiss the signature
as fraudulent and deem the
unreliable.
Note:
1) When trying to compute the signature , one might apparently reach a dead end, if
not a quadratic residue modulo
(see 2.3.5.1). Such an issue can easily be solved by
adding a small number of random bits to the hash

residue modulo
is
, until
becomes a quadratic
and, as such, its signature can be computed.
2) After obtaining the four modular square roots of the hash

these to become the signature .
80
, one might choose any of
Chapter 4 Implementing the RSA and the Rabin Cryptosystems
CHAPTER 4 - IMPLEMENTING THE RSA AND THE RABIN

CRYPTOSYSTEMS
The two desktop applications, named RSA Cryptosystem Application and Rabin Cryptosystem
Application, respectively, allow the user to fully understand, appreciate and successfully use
state-of-the art public-key cryptography
-bit encryption of data, employing the RSA and the
Rabin cryptosystems, respectively. Both software products have been developed in the C#
programming language and utilize the .NET Framework 2.0.
In terms of the graphical user interface, both applications are made out of four sections (GUI
tabs), each section expressing a part of the fundamental functionality of a public-key
cryptosystem. The sections (tabs) and their functionalities are:
Primes Generation the random prime generation component, using a powerful true
random generator implementation.
Key Generation the public and private key generation component, using the primes
obtained in the Primes Generation section.
Encryption the content encryption section, which encrypts the data (any file) chosen by
the user, according to a public key obtained in the Key Generation section, corresponding
to a public-key cryptosystem (RSA or Rabin).
Decryption the content decryption section, whose purpose is to decrypt the data (any
file encrypted in the Encryption section), with respect to its corresponding private key,
received from the Key Generation section and corresponding to one of the public-key
cryptosystems (RSA or Rabin).
This software artifact has been overhauled (revisioned) up to the version

cryptosystem) and
(for the RSA
(for the Rabin cryptosystem) as well as extensively tested, ensuring that
the software is (virtually) bug-free while, at the same time, favoring only the most efficient and
fast algorithms of the day, in order to distinguish it from other public-key cryptography solutions.
These two programs (the implementation of the RSA and Rabin cryptosystems, respectively)
present all the qualities expected in a software product, perhaps not quite up to the standards of
81
commercial software, but surely up to the demands of free and open-source solutions. Those
features could be succinctly summarized as:
General purpose software (security being a widespread concern)
Simple and intuitive GUI (able to present a variable amount of information, depending on
the users level of knowledge and interest in the matter, while, at the same time, hiding
any obscure and insignificant details)
Support for the serializing of data (primes and keys), to be able to successfully reuse it.
True randomness for the generated primes, as well as state-of-the-art
-bit encryption,
rendering the system as secure as possible (even for less-resourceful governmental

agencies), an average PC of today being capable of breaking the security of the system
through brute-force attacks in a matter of tens of years.
Well chosen data structures (for representing large integers) and powerful polynomialtime algorithms (for large integer manipulation and underlying operations required by the
cryptosystem involved), resulting in the best possible application execution speed.
Taking into account the disparity in terms of speed between public-key and private-key
cryptography (see 3.3), the utility of the application can be expressed as follows:
Encryption of small amounts of data (any file up to
KB in size)
Exchange of keys employed in symmetric-key cryptosystems, that require to be securely

transmitted to their destinations over unsecured communication channels
Both applications are identical in terms of architecture, design and graphical user interface,
the differences residing in the specific key generation, encryption and decryption algorithms
and their implementations, as defined by the cryptosystem each application is built upon.
Documenting the analysis and design of the application is done in conformity with the UML 2.1
standard and extra emphasis is being put on the implementation choices made.
82
4.1 Use cases

Cryptosystem Application
Framework
Request two random

strings from the user
<<extend>>
Generate a random
prime number
<<extend>>
Use atmospheric
noise sensors
Generate a key
<<include>>
Select two distinct
prime numbers
Select any file

User
<<include>>
Encrypt data
<<include>>
Select any public key
<<include>>
Select an encrypted
file
Decrypt data
<<extend>>
83
Select the
corresponding private
key
4.2 Subsystem model

The desktop applications reflecting the implementations of the RSA and the Rabin cryptosystems,
respectively, are built on a software architecture involving three layers, each new layer
depending on the layer(s) below.
Graphical User Interface (GUI)
3rd Layer
UI (User Interface) Layer
Random Prime Number Generation

Key Generation
2nd Layer
Encryption and Decryption

Business Layer
Large Integer Manipulation

st
1 Layer
Data Model & Technical
Layer
84
Notes:
This architecture uses a relaxed layer interaction model, allowing the upper layer (UI) to
access the Data Model & Technical Layer for some of the operations.
Method calls from one subsystem (layer) to another can only be made by higher order
layers to lower order layers.
4.3 Package diagram

For the RSA Cryptosystem Application:
<<application>>
RSA_Cryptosystem_Application
<<import>>
PrimesGeneratorImplementation
<<import>>
<<import>>
RSAEncryptionDecryptionImple
mentation
<<import>>
<<import>>
<<technical>>
BigIntegerImplementation
85
For the Rabin Cryptosystem Application:
<<application>>
Rabin_Cryptosystem_Application
<<import>>
PrimesGeneratorImplementation
<<import>>
<<import>>
RabinEncryptionDecryptionImple
mentation
<<import>>
<<import>>
<<technical>>
86
4.4 Class diagram

For the RSA Cryptosystem Application:
Package RSA_Cryptosystem_Application:
87
88
89
Package PrimesGeneratorImplementation:
90
Package RSAEncryptionDecryptionImplementation:
Package BigIntegerImplementation:
91
92
For the Rabin Cryptosystem Application:
Package Rabin_Cryptosystem_Application:
93
94
95
identical to the package having the same name from the RSA Cryptosystem
Application
96
Package RabinEncryptionDecryptionImplementation:
97
identical to the package having the same name from the RSA Cryptosystem
Application
4.5 Sequence diagram

: RSA (Rabin)
Cryptosystem
Application
: RSA (Rabin)
Encryption
Decryption
: Primes
Generator
User
Generate a
random prime
number
Generate a random
BigInteger
Response : a random
BigInteger
If the BigInteger is
composite, increase it by 1
Test the BigInteger for

primality
Response : the BigInteger

is prime or composite
Response : a prime
BigInteger
Select two
primes
Response : a public and a

private key
98
Select a file and a

public key
Read a fixed amount

of data from the file
Response: the BigInteger

representation of the data
If the end-of-file has

not been reached,
continue
Response: the encrypted
file
Select an encrypted file

(and its corresponding
private key)
Encrypt the
BigInteger
Response: the encrypted

BigInteger
Read a fixed amount

of data from the file
Response: the BigInteger

representation of the data
If the end-of-file has

not been reached,
continue
Response: the decrypted
file
Decrypt the
BigInteger
Response: the decrypted

BigInteger
99
4.6 Explaining the implementation
Package RSA_Cryptosystem_Application (Rabin_Cryptosystem_Application):
Every operation whose output is not obtained instantly is implemented as a thread, to

prevent the graphical user interface from freezing while the operation is being performed.
During the execution of a thread, most menus of the GUI are disabled, in order to
preserve the processor power for the executing task. At its completion, every threaded
operation displays the total amount of consumed time. The threaded tasks are:
Primes Generation
Encryption
Decryption
For the generation of random primes, the GUI provides two methods:
Random strings input, for which the user is required to type two random
strings of his/her choice, each having a length of at least 50 characters.
Real-time atmospheric noise, for which the application connects to the

website http://www.random.org and retrieves the random content.
Each random prime found can be saved as a binary file (*.RSAPrime or *.RabinPrime).
With respect to the key generation, the user must select two different primes (two
*.RSAPrime or *.RabinPrime files) to compute the public and the private keys. The
public and the private keys can then be saved as binary files, *.RSAPublicKey or
*.RabinPublicKey for public keys and *.RSAPrivateKey or *.RabinPrivateKey for
private keys. For the RSA cryptosystem, the public exponent is chosen to be
, unless
, in which case
is increased, until
(see 3.1.1).
For the encryption of data, the user should select a public key (*.RSAPublicKey or
*.RabinPublicKey), the file to be encrypted (having any format and length of less than or
equal to
KB) and the target encrypted file (*.RSA or *.Rabin).

100
Regarding the decryption of data, the user can choose an encrypted file (*.RSA or
*.Rabin) and the corresponding private key file (*.RSAPrivateKey or *.RabinPrivateKey).
To avoid selecting the wrong private key file, the application allows the option to
automatically determine the suitable private key file, as long as such a file exists in the
default private key folder.
All of the large integers and their inherent mathematical operations are handled by the
BigInteger class, from the package BigIntegerImplementation. As the class BigInteger
may work with large numbers of virtually any size as well as any numeration bases
, the following decisions have been made, regarding the representation of the
BigIntegers:
The numeration base is set to

uses
, so that each digit of a BigInteger
bytes of memory. By using a large numeration base (radix), the number of
digits assigned to a BigInteger becomes small, resulting in fast execution speed for
the algorithms employing BigIntegers. This arrangement benefits the application
in terms of effectiveness, since each digit of a BigInteger occupies half of a
-bit
( byte) processor registry, the extra half being used for efficiently controlling
some of the overflow resulting from mathematical operations (such as addition,
subtraction, multiplication, division). For the visual representation of BigIntegers
(GUI logs), they are converted to the numeration base
Both of the cryptosystems utilize moduli of size
-bit (
rather ahead of todays standard of

of the base
-bit (
-byte), which is
-byte). Considering the choice
, this would amount for moduli of
primes composing the moduli of
digits and
digits. As such, the maximum size of a
BigInteger to be encrypted or decrypted would be of

BigInteger representation would be of
digits and the maximum

overflow digit, to
accommodate for squaring and for repeated squaring modular exponentiation (see
2.3.4) of a BigInteger.
101
Every possible inconsistency or error in the user input or accessed data is flagged as
such, the user being presented with an appropriate warning or error message and the task
execution being terminated.
The two methods for generating a random prime, selectable at the GUI-level, are:
Random strings input, for which the random content taken into account of the
input is:
-
the characters of the strings
the position of each character in the string
the total amount of time needed by the user to type each string
the current system time
By applying standard arithmetical operations (addition, multiplication, power)

and controlled data type overflow (in fact, a modular operation) on the random
content, the application computes:
-
an array of random seeds, equal in length to the size of the prime to be

generated, which determines the digits of the random number
(corresponding to the 1st input string).
an array of random seeds, equal in length to the size of the prime to be

generated, which determines the rearranging (reordering) of the digits
of the previously obtained random number (corresponding to the 2 nd
input string).
Real-time atmospheric noise, which needs an active Internet connection, in order

to be able to access the website http://www.random.org and get the random
content. The application requests an array of random seeds from the
102
aforementioned website, of length equal to the size of the prime to be built, which
determines the digits of the random number.
After a random number has been found, using any of the two methods, the process of
primality testing commences. If the number is deemed to be prime, the algorithm
terminates, otherwise the current number is increased by 1, and the primality test is
repeated for the new numerical value. The primality test is two-phased, employing the
following steps:
-
Phase 1 Trial division by the primes less than 1000.
Phase 2 If the candidate prime has passed the trial division test, it is subjected
to the most efficient primality test of today, namely the probabilistic Miller-Rabin
primality test.
In the case of the Rabin cryptosystem, prime numbers of the form

should be disregarded, since they involve very slow decryption computations (see 2.3.5.2
the Tonelli-Shanks algorithm).
Package RSAEncryptionDecryption (RabinEncryptionDecryption):
For both cryptosystems, the Encryption class reads blocks of fixed size from the file to
be encrypted, converts the read data to BigInteger representation, encrypts the BigInteger
to another BigInteger and serializes the obtained BigInteger along with some information
regarding the binary block to a binary form in the output (encrypted) file. The encryption
must take into account special cases, such as reading a full block of data containing only
the
(null) byte, as well as salting the read BigInteger to reach its desired length, if the
block of read data is of a smaller size than the standard (fixed) size. The latter special case
may only occur when the last block of the file to be encrypted has been reached.
For both cryptosystems, the Decryption class reads each information regarding the
blocks of data of the plain (non-encrypted) file and deserializes (reads) each of the
103
BigInteger numbers from the encrypted file. Each BigInteger is then decrypted to another
BigInteger, whose binary form is then written to a file, taking into account the
representation constraints provided by the information block in the encrypted file.
The Encryption class for the RSA cryptosystem encrypts blocks of size of
(equivalent to a
bytes
-digit BigInteger) to blocks having the same length, while the
Decryption reverses the process, by decrypting every BigInteger.
The Encryption class for the Rabin cryptosystem encrypts blocks of size of
also, but those correspond to an
-digit BigInteger, whose last
bytes
digits are replicated,
after which the BigInteger is extended further with 5 digits of salt, to render small
encryption exponent attacks useless (see 3.2.5.2)). Like in the case of RSA, the obtained
BigInteger has 95 digits. The Decryption reverses the process by decrypting each
BigInteger, removing the salt digits and then deleting the replication digits from the
decrypted number.
The BigInteger class of the package is intended to store large integers and execute any
usual mathematical operation on them. The BigInteger class represents the numbers digitby-digit, in a numeration basis of choice
(+, , *, /, %, <, >,
. The traditional integer operators
, ==, !=, =) have been overloaded, so that any subsystem that
uses the BigInteger class is offered the typical and natural way of manipulating the
arithmetical operations on BigIntegers. The following specific arithmetic, abstract
algebra and computational operations have also been loaded into the BigInteger class, in
order to enhance its usefulness:
-
The power operation (through fast binary exponentiation)
The greatest common divisor (gcd), using the standard Euclidean algorithm and
the extended Euclidean algorithm (see 2.2)
The modular multiplicative inverse algorithm (see 2.3.1)

104
The modular exponentiation method, using the repeated squaring algorithm (see
2.3.4)
The serializing and deserializing of a BigInteger
Adding and removing the salt digits of a BigInteger
Adding, checking and removing of the replication digits of a BigInteger
Great care has been taken to define the best data structures for storing large integers as
well as for every algorithm utilized in the BigInteger class to employ the best polynomialtime algorithms to date, without containing any inefficient exponential-time algorithms.
105
4.7 Revealing the applications functionality

In the next subsections, all the available functionalities of the applications (RSA Cryptosystem
Application and Rabin Cryptosystem Application) are uncovered and presented.
4.7.1 Exposing the RSA Cryptosystem Application
1) Prime Generation testing:
Using real-time atmospheric noise:
106
Using random strings input:
107
2) Key generation testing

Note: For the key generation, we will be using the two primes obtained previously.
108
Key-generation log:
Starting the key generation ...
The 1st prime is

432361550592177703687471340057299480609804330045972900719681017485397749
218057789202916709695238064181347126985611764816820277262110536032783317
143480673147891773363907872121031266217828395530191606690020305668533621
654910835419383
The 2nd prime is

590328199805706857880622939787202003261487220453491227812877670672360709
417768942906244893803625222504695646844790265974661181123293137718315180
814198071320827004781831251233716697646436758990811387755381526963682557
963789862123343
The public key modulus (as the product of the two primes) is
255235215826284313701798101197088601458103469857854153667313200621769019
034221179709130622772504141821993539384892128946799478964241416396175847
597984907761060421239911340101318473177772123618496745232599210571711148
220961035361794751559129467619043682206576507534384302934926283990822636
597719086248249285300093913414479817916338231367095648791450152194912786
908023115305787650130268343387129312098496936132254802175302234645565437
521635844989264520868278957369
The public encryption exponent is e = 65537
The private decryption exponent is d =

174591371675424962742444861325136670939572738357379826798688539052350658
762289019734811264154467868194759759687271528154859402199779402429781089
275030340341003382580606762237241667341494488637215757339783978667467396
109
657547388731086452922994090303139191230209796050550473023979376845624558
403188374875220330742798872158573712302185037107120361298162411169021481
292094267320945373035107119663429555638657821588686737972624959985908075
998760669982107758429172449433
3) Encryption testing:
Note: For the encryption, we will be using the public key component of the key obtained
at the key generation testing and the file boot.ini as the file to be encrypted.
110
Encryption log:
Starting the encryption process ...
Writing the public-key to the encrypted file ...

255235215826284313701798101197088601458103469857854153667313200621769019
034221179709130622772504141821993539384892128946799478964241416396175847
597984907761060421239911340101318473177772123618496745232599210571711148
220961035361794751559129467619043682206576507534384302934926283990822636
597719086248249285300093913414479817916338231367095648791450152194912786
908023115305787650130268343387129312098496936132254802175302234645565437
521635844989264520868278957369
Plain number
141305629585215394297284896929800272417991205552816284875666447182661453
161116985349854143892016671389226678962179699568173336712184569076541493
348705053655859218493311673363755297217494528883951763210257924204930637
969070640194269254646737821267753519234533509574974028891148482127579281
610019182454203267334357957803765284573920613164905992474595171988770077
734062542559983430075786146837987066201123294957708853863888513943428394
02256579078158691755979893
111
Encrypted to number
180132248109472323179898199642301275053105278397677036155540903754731980
119744362566580985137346035916935951462542467301366456664714289600630823
147253592852261578321038960682890501958159035885179122391428962767452607
206227219463530557518116951211440075489308988828207915711942844994763163
272292027495314997973095208213137571129032247163076657321897220550777844
616983284744408804499362556759834210603383252264020940475275826456339431
870765833322420691890943460501
Plain number
882054190690688674192782416964482838912803791157796974758732467409211876
762669059660819403360239436951761334305710080268298109517276634338359028
629418378160961163408673545032119968673186121353501347854820327822144108
449051602056484494815225159865450685580339715227449142728997363170535801
924713159873398211075294032790310450907045584987250222253191206130195551
004924555860039011696944456005994386224565838136615514222386244013038154
6642249730146152812118016
Encrypted to number
206239766399106536113864063571159966113147547936046020546142808222160976
781259636935036131604251248139513789871232587211352041768453030730741037
648070349381353778748165493584122644317436741439547473818522409167285839
451148406815747274246269335397902752096765213215258757719073891929799798
676675460841039694090166743012384692764348342465381884320797550502479470
266186656065097843768323718238581992271124361945688692453199415189641856
551491941320568383709359340351
The encryption process required 0.344608 seconds.
112
4) Decryption testing:
Note: For the decryption, we will be using the private key component of the key obtained
at the key generation testing and the file boot.ini.RSA as the file to be decrypted.
113
Decryption log:
Starting the decryption process ...
Encrypted number
180132248109472323179898199642301275053105278397677036155540903754731980
119744362566580985137346035916935951462542467301366456664714289600630823
147253592852261578321038960682890501958159035885179122391428962767452607
206227219463530557518116951211440075489308988828207915711942844994763163
272292027495314997973095208213137571129032247163076657321897220550777844
616983284744408804499362556759834210603383252264020940475275826456339431
870765833322420691890943460501
Decrypted to number
141305629585215394297284896929800272417991205552816284875666447182661453
161116985349854143892016671389226678962179699568173336712184569076541493
348705053655859218493311673363755297217494528883951763210257924204930637
969070640194269254646737821267753519234533509574974028891148482127579281
610019182454203267334357957803765284573920613164905992474595171988770077
734062542559983430075786146837987066201123294957708853863888513943428394
02256579078158691755979893
Encrypted number
206239766399106536113864063571159966113147547936046020546142808222160976
781259636935036131604251248139513789871232587211352041768453030730741037
648070349381353778748165493584122644317436741439547473818522409167285839
451148406815747274246269335397902752096765213215258757719073891929799798
676675460841039694090166743012384692764348342465381884320797550502479470
114
266186656065097843768323718238581992271124361945688692453199415189641856
551491941320568383709359340351
Decrypted to number
882054190690688674192782416964482838912803791157796974758732467409211876
762669059660819403360239436951761334305710080268298109517276634338359028
629418378160961163408673545032119968673186121353501347854820327822144108
449051602056484494815225159865450685580339715227449142728997363170535801
924713159873398211075294032790310450907045584987250222253191206130195551
004924555860039011696944456005994386224565838136615514222386244013038154
6642249730146152812118016
The decryption process required 18.436528 seconds.
115
The RSA Cryptosystem Application testing allowed us to reach the following conclusions:
Each of the underlying parts of the application (Primes generation, Key

generation, Encryption and Decryption) is functioning properly and effectively
both as an independent subsystem and in connection with the rest of the
subsystems.
The whole process, starting from the prime generation, continuing with the key
generation, the encryption of data and, finally, the data decryption, is reliable,
since the file boot.ini was encrypted and then successfully decrypted to an
identical file.
116
4.7.2 Exposing the Rabin Cryptosystem Application

1) Prime Generation testing:
Using real-time atmospheric noise:
117
Using random strings input:
118
2) Key generation testing

Note: For the key generation, we will be using the two primes obtained previously.
119
Key-generation log:
Starting the key generation ...
The 1st prime is

603409157964657679988448825227008627352632691661553875156273183575885055
302192273445483717263765580524583483926382638249458505510096457157239047
653415238880921411021957953183888697090469876167979308640130331555881937
793695929781837
The 2nd prime is

128357815916338451984666730798516208816591292090318253794256736090691627
823014690236048166930141703728267678248836419624101841800359742276109433
471480484141682042541682382794805646205260462437029662800480731675383491
708414239446407
The public key (as the product of the two primes) is

774522816202603207489921705782695273011824308637579455787026382868675985
154076051705313295129157808231221923149474761000152155458765965224465751
939017457122548563609461604583102777798864920357800000875409449379457305
806420348776983068804504056655446684356212065698613025888446116727759064
440511085412497542800501359951746408257525594753216529931877167167462151
240677474059101882970150940699658244851625451764164907965824005656271969
86227970751434913303163509659
3) Encryption testing:
Note: For the encryption, we will be using the public key component of the key obtained
at the key generation testing and the file encode.exe as the file to be encrypted.
120
121
Encryption log:
Starting the encryption process ...
Writing the public-key to the encrypted file ...

774522816202603207489921705782695273011824308637579455787026382868675985
154076051705313295129157808231221923149474761000152155458765965224465751
939017457122548563609461604583102777798864920357800000875409449379457305
806420348776983068804504056655446684356212065698613025888446116727759064
440511085412497542800501359951746408257525594753216529931877167167462151
240677474059101882970150940699658244851625451764164907965824005656271969
86227970751434913303163509659
Plain number
887658009923512448177096566588506019064245397302061357464554980517301230
501083117573284658643528768282678498107503927824127235870288471841368372
986121431983864472492008051894603767851531545041588192953142083489182898
906609595065623853475733434531683587007456901263341675445407795301195760
547458590866704498577243175204207700633870438957261246233626251814238897
5289682983965164931988763214155776334805988278272
Encrypted to number
483007008228219873829899902238964584096637539588939663034491964352581738
875779088776622083769657924381436022803847978975528424704029935631922654
248139130654725166182334586363829001586042213279161485934445145285576744
162475259037850601680212460132458134713859373176992884028677105551503082
481802914809884884173156786398698723006316477556873999451631208818927218
490832883528850149848749954112280150791538108532109062521013573284790204
52315223284000005621467822995
122
Plain number 0, not encrypting it.
Plain number 0, not encrypting it.
Plain number
230390953837795621315864343260983594345582788881673324457087403921245597
235810833293187178601804887311499926973162860281984111832428818227346073
140140336080188486235311967474345041855361639416655870061769439345740570
998171783013895075709415641092744334893537931356778231644369465625584911
936676213101431486706995380701995926797698863243512208755080604819862260
31906194843650665794185518543470704657430740992
Encrypted to number
533382393346692702758090740845315513464857018030991256133778712670547680
795516065716717989716619858015085064055102356008386301416258181898487994
099858668541786050694377794809210444068923856984512521786895432912077905
635319900801224904189238210870692206259230175682729180119044149998649770
053620003240030500563308537136288782703673067860731858568411773373994337
513308442514190985397453958319502706326566372644885192028137263588487876
29073061744736467271053340490
Plain number
698447937459492709496472146340593186526839584508897574948364862873968365
657588004375751039266457251771335887618443797557812416080561222116560752
843125738339389863131759698423295210708305875658480804067053331225581395
719985164789948207111982798902740033156889891191749355209812435806923046
381647288854748933130880402595010254432273065406032320507922143156865023
5132982777853313830253155438209705500906768650253
123
Encrypted to number
341858195308298897885932766092714144216681897348725524119544788544167048
244632056906099366629396552615431308927776248404865669690764747366697759
825559846461358498096078552651753523157634390818217877578630463990882977
449697273312440912703768463371541632791207746148727092710315203894956103
197092313052140613636871632814349429595725772035010242850201437591288465
386956546772124147996253581962911369414455941013635146439124908754850387
10789748610318163140636259807
Plain number
109552614542685840451852158253083577554052712894843129168598074645684106
636256151152338774689517723521703706336634661582764331707894644937005936
354926523974447473277279448614237031917010197277476103403324247038280408
517110742936331013562879433908389324969495920190155998428106322139126651
623888667148349395813630596920257048585385392591867976742020030442117103
17320606889253405956766828167688341494419738017716
Encrypted to number
399631374475041066810052133866542700536592745312399777654835088822049805
917984256474461757402884263309408624677749494115860120651794437619098634
971730085576182606743815886134890378899068473403393493359928396055250919
438031428223041256338359393041440364527172103605707078013978586657525600
805749843854722228418785554162425462508276147542370614994802415775088643
889379916183938376156686843973335625250144744137872055005458531172305340
39427478216552637359540850272
Plain number
300237884000300490070773100969335466675007838027364735247876320195086972
875714300531415998413068073458567456623426341475873989613618121430258660
124
912967507670673972106571728149082080326313496595670779672734162679511272
007775171541526010323932477289464733594222101524985960062168250650411979
351619670302071981716340134614369895226224641039231124420252808271799079
0747710872732357619471186914755302870252861259776
Encrypted to number
215898514742984573715272132863436335925968218793635803622397638814182429
519799553689782684321187235597664801813217722041074934725111580987773931
352215908391473339644754719759303754656437308761861927668058322578102999
605340471871933460450179110633144681372147482461792341685253500355574870
505801512889524022995253211366825570295323717179411808150941195228005216
195081752219113018269063660737458027197944661923576479553881646234724560
66729052163378758297286290201
The encryption process required 0.4519882 seconds.
125
4) Decryption testing:
Note: For the decryption, we will be using the private key component of the key obtained
at the key generation testing and the file encode.exe.Rabin as the file to be decrypted.
126
Decryption log:
Starting the decryption process ...
Encrypted number
483007008228219873829899902238964584096637539588939663034491964352581738
875779088776622083769657924381436022803847978975528424704029935631922654
248139130654725166182334586363829001586042213279161485934445145285576744
162475259037850601680212460132458134713859373176992884028677105551503082
481802914809884884173156786398698723006316477556873999451631208818927218
490832883528850149848749954112280150791538108532109062521013573284790204
52315223284000005621467822995
Decrypted to number
887658009923512448177096566588506019064245397302061357464554980517301230
501083117573284658643528768282678498107503927824127235870288471841368372
986121431983864472492008051894603767851531545041588192953142083489182898
906609595065623853475733434531683587007456901263341675445407795301195760
547458590866704498577243175204207700633870438957261246233626251814238897
5289682983965164931988763214155776334805988278272
Plain number 0, obtained without decryption.
Plain number 0, obtained without decryption.
Encrypted number
533382393346692702758090740845315513464857018030991256133778712670547680
127
795516065716717989716619858015085064055102356008386301416258181898487994
099858668541786050694377794809210444068923856984512521786895432912077905
635319900801224904189238210870692206259230175682729180119044149998649770
053620003240030500563308537136288782703673067860731858568411773373994337
513308442514190985397453958319502706326566372644885192028137263588487876
29073061744736467271053340490
Decrypted to number
230390953837795621315864343260983594345582788881673324457087403921245597
235810833293187178601804887311499926973162860281984111832428818227346073
140140336080188486235311967474345041855361639416655870061769439345740570
998171783013895075709415641092744334893537931356778231644369465625584911
936676213101431486706995380701995926797698863243512208755080604819862260
31906194843650665794185518543470704657430740992
Encrypted number
341858195308298897885932766092714144216681897348725524119544788544167048
244632056906099366629396552615431308927776248404865669690764747366697759
825559846461358498096078552651753523157634390818217877578630463990882977
449697273312440912703768463371541632791207746148727092710315203894956103
197092313052140613636871632814349429595725772035010242850201437591288465
386956546772124147996253581962911369414455941013635146439124908754850387
10789748610318163140636259807
Decrypted to number
698447937459492709496472146340593186526839584508897574948364862873968365
657588004375751039266457251771335887618443797557812416080561222116560752
843125738339389863131759698423295210708305875658480804067053331225581395
719985164789948207111982798902740033156889891191749355209812435806923046
128
381647288854748933130880402595010254432273065406032320507922143156865023
5132982777853313830253155438209705500906768650253
Encrypted number
399631374475041066810052133866542700536592745312399777654835088822049805
917984256474461757402884263309408624677749494115860120651794437619098634
971730085576182606743815886134890378899068473403393493359928396055250919
438031428223041256338359393041440364527172103605707078013978586657525600
805749843854722228418785554162425462508276147542370614994802415775088643
889379916183938376156686843973335625250144744137872055005458531172305340
39427478216552637359540850272
Decrypted to number
109552614542685840451852158253083577554052712894843129168598074645684106
636256151152338774689517723521703706336634661582764331707894644937005936
354926523974447473277279448614237031917010197277476103403324247038280408
517110742936331013562879433908389324969495920190155998428106322139126651
623888667148349395813630596920257048585385392591867976742020030442117103
17320606889253405956766828167688341494419738017716
Encrypted number
215898514742984573715272132863436335925968218793635803622397638814182429
519799553689782684321187235597664801813217722041074934725111580987773931
352215908391473339644754719759303754656437308761861927668058322578102999
605340471871933460450179110633144681372147482461792341685253500355574870
505801512889524022995253211366825570295323717179411808150941195228005216
195081752219113018269063660737458027197944661923576479553881646234724560
66729052163378758297286290201
129
Decrypted to number
300237884000300490070773100969335466675007838027364735247876320195086972
875714300531415998413068073458567456623426341475873989613618121430258660
912967507670673972106571728149082080326313496595670779672734162679511272
007775171541526010323932477289464733594222101524985960062168250650411979
351619670302071981716340134614369895226224641039231124420252808271799079
0747710872732357619471186914755302870252861259776
The decryption process required 25.8880138 seconds.
130
The Rabin Cryptosystem Application testing allowed us to reach the following

conclusions:
Each of the underlying parts of the application (Primes generation, Key

generation, Encryption and Decryption) is functioning properly and effectively
both as an independent subsystem and in connection with the rest of the
subsystems.
The whole process, starting from the prime generation, continuing with the key
generation, the encryption of data and, finally, the data decryption, is reliable,
since the file encode.exe was encrypted and then successfully decrypted to an
identical file.
131
Chapter 5 Processor Core Benchmarking
CHAPTER 5 PROCESSOR CORE BENCHMARKING

5.1 The concept of benchmarking
In the field of computer science, a benchmark can be understood as the process of executing a
software application or a set of applications, in order to rigorously assess the relative
performance of a computational entity (either hardware or software). [wiki] In reality, the term
of benchmark covers a much broader spectrum, involving not only performance testing, but also
execution integrity, scalability, reliability and security evaluations of hardware and software
(sub)systems. [Pan99]
The diverse needs in quantifying computer behavior have led to the appearance of many types of
benchmarks, each measuring a particular quality or set of qualities of a system.
5.1.1 Types of benchmarks

Based on the target whose quality (most likely performance) is being measured, benchmarks can
be grouped as:
hardware benchmarks, which target the computers electronic devices
software benchmarks, which are aimed at assessing the behavior of software
applications
Based on the generality of the properties they quantify, benchmarks are split into [Hen07]:
component-level benchmarks, which measure the quality of certain hardware or
software components taken in particular, such as:
-
hardware components: central processing unit (PIFast, QuickPI), single

processor core (SuperPI), arithmetic integer unit (Dhrystone), arithmetic
floating-point unit (Whetstone), graphics processing unit (Futuremark
3DMark), sound card, network adapter, display, hard disc, notebook battery
life (BAPCo MobileMark)
132
software components: operating system, database management system (TPCC), compiler, virtual machine
system-level benchmarks (BAPCo SYSmark, Microsoft WinSAT), whose purpose is

to assess the overall behavior (performance, usually) of computer systems running
real applications. Such benchmarks may also specify the contribution of each
subsystem to the global result.
Regarding their composition, benchmarks are divided in [Hen07]:

synthetic benchmarks (Whetstone, Dhrystone, POV-Ray), which are created by
combining lower-level functions targeting computer hardware components, in a
proportion that is believed to be appropriate for efficiently evaluating the capabilities
of the desired subsystem. By this, the developers try to match an average execution
profile of the component.
application benchmarks (BAPCo SYSmark), which employ a set of popular
applications that are deemed typical for a certain industry segment or class of
products. These applications are executed either as a batch or simultaneously, in an
attempt to simulate the way users would run applications on their systems. Such
benchmarks often are system-level benchmarks.
5.2 Benchmark development fundamentals
5.2.1 Justification
While not a goal all by itself, the development of a benchmark based on the computational profile
of public-key cryptography can be envisioned as a collateral benefit to implementing an
asymmetric-key cryptosystem.
Such a benchmark would be a processor core integer benchmark, belonging to the class of
hardware component-level synthetic benchmarks due to the following reasons:
133
Public-key cryptography involves very computationally-intensive calculations in all of its

underlying operations (primes generation, key generation, encryption, decryption). Some
of these operations (primes generation, encryption, decryption) require a significant
amount of time to complete (up to seconds). This means that a benchmark using one (or
more) of these operations is able to provide a computational challenge even to the most
modern and capable of processors.
Three out of the four operations (key generation, encryption and decryption) are fully
deterministic, therefore they require the same amount of computations for a given test
data, regardless of any external factors.
The implementation of a public-key cryptosystem is heavily reliant on the eight
-bit
integer processor registers, ignores the eight double floating point registers and has a very
small (under 1 MB) memory footprint (not counting the GUI and the managed
environment). As the data required can be loaded from the disc prior to the tests
inception, the benchmark has no interference with the hard disc, nor with any devices
whose access to is controlled by the OS kernel. As such, the benchmark isolates the
desired processor core for a reliable testing experience.
Being by far the most demanding in terms of resource usage of the cryptographic operations,
while also belonging to the class of fully deterministic algorithms, the decryption protocol is the
operation of choice to be used by the benchmark, since, due to its lengthy execution, it
emphasizes the potential differences between processor cores speed, while, at the same time,
nullifying the possible inconsistencies caused by application overhead.
5.2.2 Development platform and programming paradigm

The platform of choice for developing the RSA and the Rabin cryptosystem applications has
been the .NET Framework 2.0 running on Microsoft Windows operating systems, thus, naturally,
the benchmark will be developed using C#.NET and executed on any Microsoft Windowsrunning machine that supports the .NET Framework. This ensures a great deal of generality to
134
the benchmark, as most of the contemporary PCs are having a Microsoft Windows OS installed
and are capable of executing the .NET Framework 2.0.
Although the .NET Framework has been unofficially ported to some extent to other platforms
(the Mono Project on Linux), these conversions are not 100% compatible with the original
version, mostly because they are running on completely different operating system kernels.
Therefore, such platforms are not targeted by the application, since, in order to ensure a
consistent testing experience, a benchmark cannot hope to test a processor core speed in itself,
but, more likely, a processor core speed when running on a certain operating system architecture.
Benchmarking applications have traditionally been considered heavy-duty applications that need
to run as closely to the machine-level as possible. According to the aforementioned ideology, it
would seem rather strange to choose an intermediate language programming paradigm (.NET)
over native code-generating languages in a domain as demanding and needing extreme accuracy
as benchmarking. However, as it will be pointed out in the subsequent section, the .NET
Framework is not only a good choice, but the best choice for this purpose on the MS Windows
platform.
5.2.3 Native code vs. intermediate code

The .NET paradigm may compile an application to MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language)
code, but, when an application is first run in a Windows session on a computer, it is compiled
further to machine code, taking into account all the possible optimizations for the underlying
platform. Those optimizations mostly target the processor and the version of Windows that is
running on the computer.
Aiming at the CPU ensures the best optimization (machine code generated specifically) for the
architecture the processor is based on, while addressing the Windows version ensures a smooth,
consistent experience of the application when running on different versions of the OS. This is
something that a native-code compiled application cannot hope to achieve.
135
As an example to illustrating the previously-stated theoretical point, the case of the GNU family
of native-code compilers (GCC, G++, GCJ, etc.) is exposed below, which is one of the most
remarkable portable compilers to date.
5.2.3.1 GNU compiler family processor optimizations

The GNU compiler family has two processor optimization options available: [GCC]
-mtune=CPU_TYPE, which tunes to CPU-TYPE everything applicable about the
generated code, except for the application binary interface and the set of available
instructions.
-march=CPU_TYPE, which generates instructions for the machine type CPU-TYPE.
The choices for CPU-TYPE are the same as for -mtune.
Moreover, specifying
march=CPU-TYPE implies -mtune=CPU-TYPE.

The available processors of the x86-32 and x86-64 platforms, excluding the old legacy CPUs
are: [GCC]
i686, pentiumpro - Intel PentiumPro CPU
pentium2 - Intel Pentium2 CPU based on PentiumPro core with MMX instruction set
support.
pentium3, pentium3m - Intel Pentium3 CPU based on PentiumPro core with MMX and
SSE instruction set support.
pentium-m - Low power version of Intel Pentium3 CPU with MMX, SSE and SSE2
instruction set support. Used by Centrino notebooks.
pentium4, pentium4m - Intel Pentium4 CPU with MMX, SSE and SSE2 instruction set
support
prescott - Improved version of Intel Pentium4 CPU with MMX, SSE, SSE2 and SSE3
instruction set support.
nocona - Improved version of Intel Pentium4 CPU with 64-bit extensions, MMX, SSE,
SSE2 and SSE3 instruction set support.
k6-2, k6-3 - Improved versions of AMD K6 CPU with MMX and 3dNOW! instruction
set support.
136
athlon, athlon-tbird - AMD Athlon CPU with MMX, 3dNOW!, enhanced 3dNOW! and
SSE prefetch instructions support.
athlon-4, athlon-xp, athlon-mp - Improved AMD Athlon CPU with MMX, 3dNOW!,
enhanced 3dNOW! and full SSE instruction set support.
k8, opteron, athlon64, athlon-fx - AMD K8 core based CPUs with x86-64 instruction set
support. (This supersets MMX, SSE, SSE2, 3dNOW!, enhanced 3dNOW! and 64-bit
instruction set extensions.)
Observing these optimizations options, one can easily notice the broad range of processor
families supported. One the other hand, the developer of the applications targeting the GCC
compiler cannot know in advance which type of processor the user would possess. It has, thusly,
three choices in distributing his application, none of which are fully satisfactory, at least
compared to the .NET solution of on-the-spot fully-optimized compilation of intermediate code:
1) use the least common denominator of the optimizations (that is use the i686 processor
with the -march flag) and optimize for no CPU in particular. This way no processor gets
an advantage over the other, but, on the other hand, no processor executes at its full
potential. This solution seems equitable to all CPU architectures, but, in fact, it is limiting
to all.
2) use the i686 platform, but perform tuning settings for a particular processor family (such
as mtune=pentium4) that is expected to be prevalent among the users. This would allow
the Intel Pentium 4 architecture to obtain an unfair advantage over other CPUs, since, not
only would these run unoptimized, but would also have to overcome an improper
optimization.
3) supply the application in source code format and let the user compile it for its specific
configuration. While this is an acceptable solution for the Linux world, it is inadequate to
be used with the Microsoft Windows OS, where users expect binaries and may not even
have a compiler installed.
137
5.2.4 Understanding processes and threads

A running benchmark is, from the operating systems point of view, nothing more than a thread
(or a set of threads) running (simultaneously) inside a process. In our case, in order for the
benchmark to target a certain processor core (core 0), only a single execution thread is defined (of
course, there is still the thread running the GUI of the benchmark).
That is not to say that public-key cryptography (more specifically, the decryption protocol)
cannot be put to good use in testing multi-core processor systems by employing a certain degree
of concurrency (many threads running simultaneously), but reliably testing a single processor
core is a lengthy process (taking up to tens of seconds) and, obviously, accurate parallelization
testing would visibly increase this duration.
Since modern operating system kernels (including the Microsoft Windows NT-based OSs, the
officially supported hosts for the .NET Framework) are running tens of processes containing
hundreds of threads overall, it becomes clear that true parallel execution is all but impossible on
most of the systems in use nowadays. Thus, systems must employ at least a certain degree of
concurrency, regardless of the amount of processors (or processor cores) existing in their
underlying architectures.
The solution that most OSs have chosen to implement is the priority-based and Round-Robin
preemptive scheduling, which utilizes both external and internal means of establishing and
adjusting process and thread priorities. The granularity of this operation is at thread level, rather
than at process level, but process priority does contribute at defining the priority of its contained
threads.
As the benchmark is created for the Microsoft Windows platform it behooves us to expose the
process and thread scheduling mechanisms of MS Windows, although many concepts are
implemented similarly in the other contemporary operating systems of today, such as Linux, Sun
Solaris and Apple MacOS.
138
5.2.5 Process and thread execution priority

While not being able to overcome all the multi-threading related issues (dead-locks, live-locks,
starvation and races), the operating system must define and implement a series of rules for thread
scheduling and preemption that significantly alleviate live-locks and starvation scenarios.
In the MS Windows OS, each process is given a priority at creation-time, that will influence the
priorities of its threads. These priorities, as made available through the Win32 API, are: [MSDN]
idle referring to processes whose threads run only when the system is in idle state. The
threads of these processes are preempted by any thread of a process having a higher
priority. An example of such a process would be the screen saver.
normal for processes with no special requirements in terms of scheduling.
high designed for processes that perform time-critical tasks and must be executed
without delay. The threads of these processes preempt the threads of other processes
belonging to a normal or idle priority class. Extra attention must be paid when assigning a
process high priority, because a high-priority class application can use almost all of the
available CPU time, leading to the starvation of other processes. A user desiring to run a
process with the high priority must possess administrative rights. A typical high-priority
process is the Windows Task Manager, which must allow for a quick response time,
irrespective of the overall load of the system.
real-time designated for processes that need the highest possible priority. The threads of
these processes preempt the threads of all other processes, including also system services.
Real-time processes must be used only as a last resort solution, because, when run for
more than a few milliseconds, they cause the whole system to become unresponsive. A
user wanting to run a process with the real-time priority must have administrative rights.
139
We need our benchmark application to run at the highest possible priority to ensure very reliable
results, without interfering with system services and other essential processes. As such, the
priority of the choice for the benchmark is the high process priority. A small drawback to this
decision is that the user of the application must be granted administrative privileges on the
system.
MS Windows lets the user define a priority value for any thread, through the Win32 API. This
value, together with the priority class of the thread's process, determines the thread's base
priority level. The operating system scheduler (dispatcher) may alter the thread priority within a
certain range of the base priority level. The priority values for threads are listed below: [Sol00]
idle - No CPU time slices will be assigned to this thread, unless all the other threads of the
process are in an idle state (waiting or blocked).
lowest significantly diminished priority
below normal reduced priority
normal Unless specific priority values are specified, any thread is given this priority
value at creation-time.
above normal slightly elevated priority
highest Such a thread receives the highest priority allowed, considering the priority
class of its containing process.
time-critical A thread belonging to this category monopolizes the processor time-slices
assigned to its parent process. This priority value is not made available through the .NET
Framework.
Considering that we require our benchmarking thread to run virtually uninterrupted (without
being subject to the Windows dispatcher), we must assign it the highest priority value. In
conjunction with the high process priority class, this should amount for minimal thread
preemption and, therefore, a reliable and consistent testing experience. However, since the .NET
Framework involves a managed execution environment, one must not make any assumptions as
to the bijective binding of managed threads to operating system threads. This correspondence
must be enforced explicitly.
140
5.3 Implementing the benchmark
5.3.1 Benchmark solution components

The benchmarking solution is composed out of two applications, as revealed below:
1) the benchmarking application itself, relying on the decryption algorithm of the RSA
cryptosystem, is developed in C# 2.0 and the .NET Framework 2.0. This component will
be distributed to each system whose processor core performance is to be determined.
2) a web application consisting of:
a dynamic web page, able to display all the benchmark results stored on the server
a module designed to receive the test result from each client benchmark
application and store it on the server inside an external file
This component is implemented as a CGI dynamic web page written in the C language
(using GNU C) and deployed on the facultys Red Hat Linux students server
(http://www.scs.ubbcluj.ro/~rm20366/cgi-bin/ProcessorCoreBenchmarkResults.cgi).
5.3.2 Use cases
Benchmark System
Start the benchmark
<<include>>
User
Submit the result of the

benchmark
View all the
benchmark results
<<include>>
Request all the benchmark
results
141
Web
application
5.3.3 Subsystem model

The processor benchmark desktop application is built on a software architecture involving three
layers (the same architecture as that of the RSA and Rabin cryptosystem applications), each new
layer depending on the layer(s) below.
Graphical User Interface (GUI)
3rd Layer
UI (User Interface) Layer
System Information Manager
2nd Layer
Benchmark Results Handler

Business Layer
Large Integer Manipulation

st
1 Layer
Data Model & Technical
Layer
142
Notes:
This architecture uses a relaxed layer interaction model, allowing the upper layer (UI) to
access the Data Model & Technical Layer for some of the operations.
Method calls from one subsystem (layer) to another can only be made by higher order
layers to lower order layers.
5.3.4 Package diagram
This is the package diagram for the processor benchmark desktop application.
<<application>>
ProcessorBenchmark
<<import>>
ResultsHandler
<<import>>
<<import>>
<<technical>>
SystemInformation
143
5.3.5 Class diagram

Package ProcessorBenchmark:
144
Package ResultsHandler:
Package SystemInformation:
145
identical to the package having the same name from the RSA (Rabin) Cryptosystem
Application
5.3.6 Sequence diagram

: Processor
Benchmark
GUI
: Results
Manager
: System
Information
User
Start
benchmark
Generate system
information
Get system
information
Decrypt data
Submit the processor

score
Set the processor score
Submit test data to the

web server
Get test results string
Submit POST request to

the web server
Get system information

string
Response : the system
information string
Response : the test results

string
Show test results
146

View all
benchmark results
View all benchmark results

from the web server
Response : the web page

containing all the benchmark
results
Submit GET request to

the web server
Response : the web page
containing all the benchmark
results
Show the web page of all

the benchmark test results
5.3.7 Deployment diagram
<<device>>
Apache Web Server
<<device>>
Desktop PC
<<web application>>
ProcessorCoreBenchmarkR
esults.cgi
<<HTTP>>
<<desktop application>>
ProcessorBenchmark.exe
<<text file>>
ProcessorCoreBenchmarkR
esults.txt
147
5.3.8 Exposing the applications functionality
1) Desktop application
The desktop application allows its users to either:
start the processor core benchmark, which will test the performance of the first
CPU core, submit the result (using a POST request) to the web application and
also display the benchmark result inside the desktop applications GUI
view the overall benchmark results provided by the web application, while also
highlighting the current test result inside the web page (using a GET request), if
such a test has been performed during the applications execution
148
2) Web application
149
The web application provides the following functionality:
simply accessing the web page displays the results of all the benchmarks to date
sending a GET request to the web application, containing a particular test result
information, will signal the web application to render all the benchmarks results,
while highlighting the supplied result
sending a POST request to the web application, containing a new test result, will
trigger the web application to add it to its external benchmark results file
150
Conclusions
CONCLUSIONS
In the past 10 years, computer data security has become an ever-increasing concern to
governments, as well as companies and even end-users, since almost any information nowadays
is processed and stored in its electronic form, rather than using classical (traditional) means such
as pen & paper, dossiers, file cabinets, typewriters, etc. Even if sometimes information is
presented on traditional support (paper), it is still developed and maintained using electronic
devices.
In this context, it is the duty of cryptography not only to secure data for (indefinite) safekeeping,
but also to safely transmit important (sensitive) digital content over unsecured communication
channels. In an era of computer networks (physical or virtual) and the Internet, symmetric-key
cryptography cannot cope all-by-itself with the demands of secure digital systems. Therefore, in
modern-day data security systems, symmetric-key cryptosystems are coupled with public-key
cryptosystems, in an effort to solve the issues of safe symmetric-key exchange and for devising
of authentication (and non-repudiation) protocols.
The two computer applications (RSA Cryptosystem Application and Rabin Cryptosystem
Application) present a successful approach to securing limited amounts of data, as well as
providing a safe container for symmetric-key cryptosystem keys, that are about to be distributed
over unsecured communication channels. The power of the application resides in the strength of
its algorithms, the efficiency of its implementation and its large key size of 1536 bits, while its
accessibility is enhanced by the use of intuitive graphical user interface, suitable for users having
different levels of knowledge (or even no knowledge) of cryptography and its inherent protocols.
The processor core benchmark, which provides both the desktop benchmarking application
actually fulfilling the performance evaluation and the web application storing and revealing the
cumulated results of individual tests, has proven to be very reliable, allowing only minimal
fluctuations between the results of successive tests involving the same computer processor, as
well as establishing a processor core speed hierarchy that is in concordance with that of
prestigious computer hardware magazines.
151
152
References
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[Cri06] S. Crivei, Computational Algebra: Lecture Notes, unpublished, 2006
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International Conference on Information and Communications Security (ICICS 2007),
Zhengzhou, China, 2007
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Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2007
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[GCC] The GNU C Compiler Info Page, GNU C Compiler 4.2.2, Knoppix 5.3.1 Distribution
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[net02] The Primes Page, http://primes.utm.edu
[net03] RANDOM.ORG True Random Number Service, http://www.random.org
154

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UNIVERSITATEA BABE-BOLYAI CLUJ-NAPOCA

FACULTATEA DE MATEMATIC I INFORMATIC

BABE-BOLYAI UNIVERSITY CLUJ-NAPOCA

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE THESIS

This work is organized into five chapters, as follows:

Chapter 2 Mathematical Foundations of Public-key Cryptography displays the

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Cryptography

CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION TO CRYPTOGRAPHY

1.1.1 The story of Alice and Bob

Fig.1.1 Simplified communication network

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Cryptography

One of the tactics employed by the agents of the previously-mentioned organizations is to

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Cryptography

maintain a minimal cost of equipment and active network connection

Encryption = the process of turning plaintext into ciphertext (encoding).

Decryption = the process of turning ciphertext into plaintext (decoding).

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Cryptography

Fig.1.2 Encryption-decryption scheme [Sch96]

Cipher = algorithm for performing encryption and decryption

Cryptosystem = a suite of notations and algorithms required to implement a particular form of

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Cryptography

an implementation constraint: given

and each decryption rule

1.1.3 A simple encryption-decryption example

the right, modulo the size of the alphabet.

Formalization of the Caesar cipher [Cri06]:

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Cryptography

Plaintext: julius caesar

1.1.4 Cryptography vs. steganography

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Cryptography

Modern steganographic techniques involve hiding the secret message inside:

1.1.5 A simple steganography example

1.2 Symmetric-key cryptosystems

K and encryption-decryption pair

feasible (easy") to compute

key cryptography is also referred to as single-key, one-key and private-key cryptography.

K ), the term symmetric-key becomes completely justified. Such a

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Cryptography

1.2.1 A simple symmetric-key encryption-decryption example

Formalization of the XOR cryptosystem:

ing occurs bit-by-bit on corresponding bit positions of

, where the XORand

, from the lowest to the

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Cryptography

1.2.2 Characteristics of symmetric-key cryptosystems

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Cryptography

Fig.1.3 Communication scheme in a symmetric-key cryptosystem [Men96]

1.2.3 Block ciphers vs. stream ciphers

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Cryptography

Fig.1.4 Block cipher encryption diagram

Fig.1.5 Block cipher decryption diagram

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Cryptography

Fig.1.6 Stream cipher encryption diagram

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Cryptography

Fig.1.7 Stream cipher decryption diagram

Formalization of the Vigenre cipher [Cri06]:

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Cryptography

encryption keyword GIOVAN, therefore

1.2.5 Possible attacks on symmetric-key cryptosystems

Possible attack types and their strategies:

Chapter 1 - Introduction to Cryptography

Chapter 2 Mathematical Foundations of Public-Key Cryptography

CHAPTER 2 - MATHEMATICAL FOUNDATIONS OF PUBLIC-KEY