Information Systems and Security

Notes Part 2

1. Encryption

- Encryption is technique of converting normal/ plain text to a

meaningless (cipher text)
- Encryption process takes place at sender’s place
- Encryption’s major task is to convert the plain text to cipher text
- Any message can be encrypted with either a secret or a public key
- The sender sends the data to the receiver post encryption
- Same algorithm with the same key is used for the decryption process
- Encryption prevents unauthorised parties to read the message

2. Decryption

- Decryption is a process of converting meaningless message into its

original form
- Decryption process takes place at receiver’s end
- Decryption’s main task is to convert the cipher text into plain text
- Encrypted message can be decrypted with either secret key or public key
- In decryption, receiver receives the cipher text and converts it into
plain text

 CAESAR CIPHER

- The Caesar cipher technique is a substitution cipher technique where in

each alphabet of the plain text is replaced with another alphabet/
number/ special characters
- Caesar cipher was proposed by Julius Caesar
- Caesar cipher is a special case substitution technique where in each
alphabet of a message/ plain text is replaced by alphabet/ number /
special characters
- Caesar cipher is a weak ciphering technique where in it just requires
is to do a reverse caesar cipher, i.e replace each alphabet that is 3
places up the line
- To work backwards, take a cipher text produced by Caesar cipher, and
replace A with X, B with Y, D with with A, E, B and so on.
- Caesar Cipher Algorithm:

i. Select a plain message and note down the set of alphabets

ii.Select a number ‘k’ by which the sender wants to shift the alphabets
with
iii.Note down/ generate/ encrypt the entire message with the alphabets to
be replaced by ‘k’

- As simple caesar cipher is in terms of theory, it is indeed not a good

practice as it becomes an easy guess for the attacker
- In order to make attacker’s life more difficult, it is necessary to use
a bit more complicated caesar cipher
- Let us assume, the cipher text may not be replaced by 3 alphabets but
more, not necessarily down the order but can be any places down the
order
- Now A cannot be necessarily replaced by D but can be any other
alphabet, thus for each alphabet it has 25 possibilities
- Modified Caesar Cipher Algorithm
i. Let ‘k’ be the number equal to 1
ii.Read the complete cipher text
iii.Replace each alphabet in the cipher text with an alphabet with k
positions down
iv.Increment k by 1
v. If k is less than 26 then go to step 2 Otherwise stop the process

Example:

CAESAR CIPHER

K = 23

Plain Text

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Cipher Text

Shift = 23

X Y Z A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W

Plain Text: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Cipher Text: X Y Z A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W

 VERMAN CIPHER

- Verman Cipher is a transposition technique used for encryption

technique
- Verman cipher is implemented using a random set of non-repeating
characters as input cipher text
- Once the input text for cipher transposition is used, it is never used
again
- Hence it is also known as One time pad
- The length of the input cipher text is equal to the length of the
original plain text
- Algorithm:
i. Decide length of columns and write the message in the blocks row by
row
ii.Decide the order of columns as per the length of the columns and then
read the text as per the columns
iii.The cipher text is obtained
iv.Perform steps 1 through 3 once more, so the representation changes and
again read the text as per the column order
v. Continue the iterations till desired

Example:

Column 1 Column 2 Column 3 Column 4 Column 5

D A T A S

S I E N C

E I S I M

P O R T A

N T

Plain Text: Data Science is important

Iterations: 2
Columns: 5
Order: 4,5,2,31
Cipher Text Iteration 1:
ASATDNCIESIMISETAORPTN

Column 1 Column 2 Column 3 Column 4 Column 5

A S A T D

N C I E S

I M I S E

T A O R P

T N

Cipher Text Iteration 2:

Order: 4,5,2,3,1

Cipher Text Iteration 2:

TDSAAESCINSEMIIRPAOTN