SS ASSIGNMENT

Name-Diya Shah
Roll No-C071

Q1. Explain symmetric encryption technique with help of examples

A symmetric encryption algorithm is one where the same key does both
encryption and decryption. Because of its symmetry, it is of utmost importance
that the key must be kept secret. Symmetric encryption is a kind of
computerised cryptography, which uses a particular encryption key to conceal
the contents of an electronic message. Its data conversion utilises a
mathematical procedure along with a private key, which results in the
potential failure to make sense of a message for somebody who doesn’t have
the right tools to decrypt it. Symmetric encryption is a two-way algorithm
because the mathematical procedure is turned back when decrypting the
message, along with using the same private key.
Let’s consider a real-world example. Suppose there are two people-Alice and
Bob. Bob is an undercover spy agent who’s on a secret mission in a foreign
country and Alice is his case manager. Bob needs to send data in such a way
that it doesn’t get intercepted or tampered by their enemies. But this time,
Alice figures out a new way to secure the information and she gives one key,
known as the public key, to Bob. Bob is instructed to encrypt his sensitive
information using the public key that he has. Alice, on the other end, has the
mathematically related private key and can easily decrypt the information he
transmits using it.
Another example is the ROTn algorithm, where, given an alphabet of m letters
and n < m, you take the cleartext in this alphabet and rotate each letter by n.
For example, in the Roman alphabet that we use in English there are m = 26
letters. If I choose n = 1, the ROT1 algorithm maps a->b, b->c, ... y->z, z->a. So
the cleartext "elephant" maps to "fmfoqibou". Many such methods are easily
attacked (often by statistical methods), allowing the key to be determined and
thus the security broken.
‘Cipher Key’ is the most basic example of Symmetric Encryption. Where the
key, or secret, in this case is the shift being done to the alphabetical order.
If I want to encrypt the message:
 THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG
With a shift of 1 would give me
 UIF RVJDL CSPXO GPY KVNQT PWFS UIF MBAZ EPH
Now knowing the key used to encrypt, which is the shift (1 in this case), I can
decrypt that the above message back into
 THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG
The fact that I can use the same key, password, secret or whatever you’d want
to call it in order to both encrypt and decrypt messages is what Symmetric key
cryptography is all about.