What is the entropy of a message space and how is it used in cryptography?

Explain why the concept of

entropy is useful?

The entropy of a set of messages is the number of bits needed to encode all possible messages with an
optimal encoding (Ron Poet, 2020). Entropy is minimum bits needed to accommodate data of messages that
is counted by finding logarithm of probabilities. The higher the entropy, the more an uncertainty can be
delivered from the data.

Entropy in cyber security is a very useful concept since it measures the randomness of a data-generating
function (Thomas W. Edgar & David O. Manz, 2017). Therefore, the appearance of entropy as a well accepted
concept has been becoming very beneficial as a single measurement in the cryptography world.

Calculate the entropy of the following message space in which the message "Nothing Special" occurs with
probability 1/2 and the messages "Rain", "Snow", "Ice" and "Gales" each occur with probability 1/8.

Nothing Special = 1/2

Rain = Snow = Ice = Gales = 1/8

H = ½ log 2 (2) + 1/8 log2 (8) x 4

H = ½ + 3/8 x 4

H = ½ + 12/8

H = 16/8 = 2

Define the term “redundancy of a language” and give a formula to calculate it in terms of various rates of a
language. How can these rates be calculated?

Redundancy of language may come from uneven single letter distribution, uneven diagram frequency, trigram
frequency or even the combination of the three. This redundancy is defined as a true rate of useless or less
useful parts of language that brings no information to the receiver. The formula to count this redundancy can
be counted as follow where:

D = the redundancy pf language

R = the absolute rate or the maximum bits of information that is possible to be accommodated in the
language

R = the actual rate of information to be encoded in the language

D = R - r, where for English language, R equals 4.7 and r equals 1.5. As a result, the rate of redundancy in
English language is 3.2.

A system authenticates users by asking them to enter an 8 character password. Estimate the entropy of this
password system if the users use lower case English words as their passwords. Describe how a practical
attack that exploits this low entropy could be mounted.

The number of lower-case English alphabets = 26 and the character to accommodate in the password=8.
Meaning, the probability of each alphabet to occur in the password is 1/26 in each character space. The
entropy of this password can be counted as follow:
H = 1/26 log2 (26) x 8

H = 1/26 x 4.7 x 8 = 1.44

The low entropy with 8-digit password will enable attackers to use brute force attacks. This password style has
26^8 possibilities that equals with 208.827.064.576 combinations. By using a well-known password cracker
software such as John The Ripper in a fast computer, it would take few hours just to crack this password.

Describe with your own diagrams how a rotor machine implements an encryption algorithm, explaining
how multiple rotors can be combined, how letters of the plain text are entered and letters of the
resulting cipher text displayed. How is the encryption key entered? How is the cipher text decrypted to
produce the original plain text?

The number of rotors included in a rotor machine may vary depending on the security level. There is a
mirror/reflector that enables the machine to turn back the encrypted message as the user inputs the
original message. The diagrams are as follow:

Rotor 1 Rotor 2 Reflector

A A A
B B B
C C C
D D D
E E E

OUTPUT
“E”

KEYBOARD

“A”