ECE 4013 – CRYPTOGRAPHY AND NETWORK SECURITY

DIGITAL ASSIGNMENT – 2

ANALYSIS ON THE ENCRYPTION, ALGORITHM AND ASSOCIATED

PROTOCOLS INVOLVED IN VARIOUS APPLICATION

GAYATHRI CHOCKANATHAN
16BEC1316

1) WhatsApp

Introduction:

WhatsApp is a cross-platform mobile messaging app which allows you to exchange

messages without having to pay for SMS. WhatsApp Messenger is available for iPhone,
BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone and Nokia. Theses phones can all message each other.
Because WhatsApp Messenger uses the same internet data plan that you use for email and
web browsing, there is no cost to message and stay in touch with your friends.
It is one of the fastest growing messaging platforms.

Architecture:

Encryption Method:

WhatsApp uses End to End Encryption, it is a very powerful feature that basically codes your
messages. When you send a text to a friend, it gets scrambled (and hence encrypted) on its
way and can only be decoded on the recipient’s device. The same algorithm applies for
sharing files and making calls. The benefit of such scrambling is that it keeps your chats and
calls protected against unwelcome acts of privacy breaching by a third party.

By installing WhatsApp on your phone, a bunch of Public Keys for your phone are generated
and stored on WhatsApp’s server and are then used to encrypt texts that someone sends
you. The number of Public Keys assigned to a device can vary for different apps and
programs. In the case of WhatsApp, for example, there are three public keys, namely
the Identity Key, Signed Pre-Key and One-time Pre-Key (this one is used only for the first
time someone texts you and is then deleted afterwards).

in this example Sam, sends a message to Emma, Sam’s phone uses the Public Keys of
Emma’s phone to encrypt the message and deliver it to Emma. However, the system has to
make sure that the message can only be read by Emma (i.e., the intended recipient) and no
one else, not even the server that is relaying the message.

Associated Protocols:

•XMPP is a client-server application protocol.

•Uses TCP while WebSockets can also be used.
•Push instead of pull. •Matured implimentaton.
•Serverless Messaging (P2P) for Video, Audio and File transfer
•Open source servers: Wildfire, ejabberd, Jabberd 2, Jabberd 1.4
•Supports wide variety of datastore like: MySQL, Postgresql, Oracle, sqlite, Berkeley DB, file
2) Email

Introduction:

The electronic mail is one of the most common internet services, it remains one of its
important applications over the years. Email has enormous features, including sending
messages with hyperlinks, attachments, HTML text, and embedded photos

Architecture:

It contains two sub systems:

(i) the user agents are used to read, send, compose, replies to messages, display incoming
messages, and arrange messages by filing, searching, and deleting them. Examples to most
common user agents are Google Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla and Apple Mail.
(ii) The message transfer agents, are used to send messages from the source to the
destination with the help of Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). They are also known as
mail servers.

Encryption Method:

Email encryption applies the principles mentioned earlier to email. Users publish a
public key that is accessible by others in order to encrypt messages. The sender also has a
secret private key that is used to decrypt (decode) the messages and encrypt (code) their
own messages.
The email messages are scrambled into an unreadable format in order to hide them from
the bad guys. The public key is used to encrypt and is shared with everyone. The private
key is used to decrypt and is private.
Think of the decoder ring example: Companies send out thousands of coded (encrypted)
messages to consumers. But the decoder rings (the decryption) are only owned by private
individuals.

Most commonly used Encryption methods:

• PGP
o (Pretty Good Privacy) is a hybrid approach: When user data is encrypted with
PGP, PGP compresses the text; this not only saves disk space but increases
security.
• S/MIME
o S/MIME stands for Secure Multi-Purpose Internet Mail Extension. S/MIME uses
a digital signature as well as encryption to secure the email transmissions.
• TLS
o TLS stands for Transport Layer Security, it is a protocol that provides
authentication, privacy, and data integrity between two communicating
computer applications. It's the most widely-deployed security protocol used
today and is used for web browsers and other applications that require data to
be securely exchanged over a network, such as web browsing sessions, file
transfers, VPN connections, remote desktop sessions, and voice over IP (VoIP).

Associated Protocols:

The Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is a mail protocol used for accessing
email on a remote web server from a local client. IMAP and POP3 are the two most
commonly used Internet mail protocols for retrieving emails. Both protocols are supported
by all modern email clients and web servers.

While the POP3 protocol assumes that your email is being accessed only from one
application, IMAP allows simultaneous access by multiple clients. This is why IMAP is more
suitable for you if you're going to access your email from different locations or if your
messages are managed by multiple users.

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is the standard protocol for sending
emails across the Internet.
3) E-Commerce

Introduction:
Ecommerce, also known as electronic commerce or internet commerce, refers to the buying
and selling of goods or services using the internet, and the transfer of money and data to
execute these transactions.

Architecture:

E-commerce is based on the client-server architecture.

A client can be an application, which uses a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that sends
request to a server for certain services.
The server is the provider of the services requested by the client.

The three-tier architecture includes three tiers: top tier, middle tier and third tier.

• The top tier includes a user interface where user services such as session, text input,
and dialog and display management reside.
• The middle tier provides process management services such as process
development, process monitoring and process resourcing that are shared by the
multiple applications.
• The third tier provides database management functionality. The data management
component ensures that the data is consistent throughout the distributed
environment, the centralized process logic in this architecture, which makes
administration easier by localizing the system functionality, is placed on the middle
tier.

Encryption Method:

There are two main ways to do encryption today. The first kind of
encryption, called symmetric cryptography or shared secret encryption, has been used since
ancient Egyptian times. This form of encryption uses a secret key, called the shared secret,
to scramble the data into unintelligible gibberish. The person on the other end needs the
shared secret (key) to unlock the data—the encryption algorithm. You can change the key
and change the results of the encryption. It is called symmetric cryptography because the
same key is used on both ends for both encryption and decryption

• Data Encryption Standard (DES)

o The Data Encryption Standard is a symmetric-key algorithm for the
encryption of electronic data. Although its short key length of 56 bits,
criticized from the beginning, makes it too insecure for most current
applications, it was highly influential in the advancement of modern
cryptography.

• TripleDES
o To ensure additional security through encryption capabilities. Each block
contains 64 bits of data.

• AES
o The AES has three fixed 128-bit block ciphers with cryptographic key sizes of
128, 192 and 256 bits. Key size is unlimited, whereas the block size
maximum is 256 bits.

Associated Protocols:

• SSL
o Also known as Secure Sockets Layer, this security certificate has become one
of the most of the internet. It is used by both large companies and minority
bloggers. Its purpose is to protect your data transactions between a website
(provider) and its visitors (recipients).

o Identifying sites with SSL certificates is easy: a green padlock appears in the
browser, indicating to users that all their data is secure.

• SET
o SET stands for Secure Electronic Transaction, it provides a series of
certificates and digital signatures between the consumer, the company and
the banking entity, which regulate the monetary transaction from its
beginning to its end. Considering that it was created by Visa and MasterCard
in collaboration with giants such as Microsoft, IBM or Netscape, the
effectiveness of the SET protocol should not surprise us.
• TLS
• HTTPS
4) Digital Document Exchange

Introduction:
It replaces postal mail, fax and email. While email is also an electronic approach, the
documents exchanged via email must still be handled by people rather than computers.
Having people involved slows down the processing of the documents and also introduces
errors. Instead, EDI documents can flow straight through to the appropriate application on
the receiver’s computer (e.g., the Order Management System) and processing can begin
immediately.

Architecture:

The system must read the private key of the users from key store, verification will happen
which will improve the confidentiality and integrity of the document that is to be sent across
digitally.

Encryption Method:
Document encryption is the process by which documents are protected with
cryptographic keys (a password, public key, token, etc.) so that only individuals with the
corresponding decryption keys (the same password, private key, token, etc.) can open them.
It is used to protect documents in transit (i.e. sent via email) and at rest (i.e. stored on a disk
or in the cloud) from being accessed by unauthorized users.
• PGP
• AES

Associated Protocols:
• FTP
o A standard Internet protocol for transmitting files between computers on
the Internet over TCP/IP connections. FTP is a client-server protocol where a
client will ask for a file, and a local or remote server will provide it.
• SMTP
• HTTP
5) Facebook

Introduction:

Facebook system was founded in 2004, with a mission to give people the power to
share and make the world more open and still connecting them with friendship relationship.
People from anywhere can use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, they can
share such contents of data and multimedia such as audios/videos and express what matters
to them by comments and likes.

Architecture:

The online social network (OSN) system is relying on globally distributed datacenters
which are highly dependent on centralized U.S data centers, in which scalability, availability,
openness, reliability and security are the major System requirements. When founded in
2004 it was such a dream to be the largest OSN by the year of 2013 putting the system on
the surface of risk unless it well designed and protected against failure and attacks. the
architecture of the system, the scheme here is 3 tier architecture or more (4 tier), in which
the data flow originated form client’s requests.

Encryption Method:

Facebook uses HTTPS Encrypted Connections to improve security. HTTPS stands for
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure which is basically the SSL/TLS (transport layer security)
protocol that provides encrypted communication and security identification of a web server.
This type of technology will essentially help prevent eavesdroppers and cyber-attacks on
your secure connection to whatever you are accessing over the Internet.

Associated Protocols:

The mobile application is using the MQTT protocol. The messenger on the webpage
on the other hand, along with the login page communicate through a standard HTTPS
protocol as the remaining part of the application.
You can sniff the HTTPS packets being sent on the local network, through wireshark but
since HTTPS is SSL encrypted, you will just see hashes in the response body and you will not
see the actual text. That's probably the main reason why you couldn't find it. In wireshark
the HTTPS is denoted as SSLv3.

MQTT:

MQTT protocol is a client-server, publisher/subscriber, open, and light-weight

messaging transport protocol. At the heart of MQTT is the central communication point
known as MQTT broker. It is responsible for dispersing messages to rightful clients.

Each client which publishes a message to the MQTT broker includes the routing information,
known as topic. Clients may subscribe to multiple topics and broker all the messages
published matching the topic. The clients don’t have to know each other to receive
information; they just have to subscribe to relevant topics.

For instance, imagine a simple network of three clients, i.e A, B and C, where each is

connected to a broker via a TCP connection.

Client-A publishes 34.5 for topic temperature. The broker identifies this and forwards this
message to all the subscribers, which in this case are Client-B and Client-C.

HTTPS:
HTTPS is used by Facebook to prevent its website from having their information broadcast in
a way that’s easily viewed by anyone snooping on the network. When information is sent
over regular HTTP, the information is broken into packets of data that can be easily “sniffed”
using free software. This makes communication over the an unsecure medium, such as
public Wi-Fi, highly vulnerable to interception. In fact, all communications that occur over
HTTP occur in plain text, making them highly accessible to anyone with the correct tools, and
vulnerable to man-in the-middle attack.