CTIS 496::Data Security in Computing::Spring 2011 Computer Technology and Information Systems, Bilkent University Exercises Set III

1. Study all review questions at the end of the chapter 2 of Stallings textbook (page 56). 2. Describe the Brute Force attack applied to block ciphers. Briefly mention about such attacks applied to DES block cipher. 3. Discuss both Unconditional Security and Perfect Secrecy. How are they related to each other? Under which conditions, some classical ciphers do provide perfect secrecy. 4. What is Kerckhoffs' principle? 5. What are the algorithm components of Conventional Encryption? 6. List all requirements for secure use of symmetric (conventional) encryption. 7. List some secure protocols use block ciphers. 8. Which important cryptographic primitives can be constructed from block ciphers? 9. List applications of cryptographic hash functions. 10. If you have a block cipher operates on n-bit block size plaintext, then what is the number of all possible such n-bit blocks? 11. Mention parameters and design features for Feistel Cipher Structure (also for Block Ciphers). 12. Briefly discuss evaluation critea required to select AES cipher. 13. Mention the round components and parameters (block and key size, number of rounds) of AES cipher. 14. Mention some projects whose aims are to identify secure cryptographic primitives.

15. Mention Cipher Block Modes of Operations: ECB, CBC, CFB and CTR (why do we need to use them?), discuss their advantages and disadvantages. 16. Compare block ciphers and stream ciphers. 17. How can a keystream of a stream cipher be generated? 18. How are encryption and decryption operations of a stream ciphers done? 19. Mention RC4 Stream Cipher. 20. How are stream ciphers and One-time Pad related to each other? 21. List some stream ciphers' design considerations. 22. List some methods that can be used to design cryptographically strong PRNGs. 23. How can a PRNG be tested? 24. Study review questions 2.1-2.8 at the end of the chapter 3 of Stallings textbook (page 70). 25. Solve problems 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.9, 2.12, 2.13, 2.14, 2.15, 2.16, 2.17, and 2.18 in pages 71-74 at the end of the chapter 2 of Stallings textbook.