Cryptography Essentials

(ISC531)

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Chapter 2 – Classical Encryption
Techniques

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Cryptography

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Cryptography

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 Symmetric Encryption
• or conventional / private-key / single-key
• sender and recipient share a common key
• all classical encryption algorithms are private-
key
• was only type prior to invention of public-key
in 1970’s
• and by far most widely used

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 Some Basic Terminology
• plaintext - original message
• ciphertext - coded message
• cipher - algorithm for transforming plaintext to ciphertext
• key - info used in cipher known only to sender/receiver
• encipher (encrypt) - converting plaintext to ciphertext
• decipher (decrypt) - recovering ciphertext from plaintext
• cryptography - study of encryption principles/methods
• cryptanalysis (codebreaking) - study of principles/ methods
of deciphering ciphertext without knowing key
• cryptology - field of both cryptography and cryptanalysis
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Symmetric Cipher Model

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 Symmetric Cipher Model
Ingredients of the symmetric cipher model
• plaintext - original message
• encryption algorithm – performs
substitutions/transformations on plaintext
• secret key – control exact
substitutions/transformations used in encryption
algorithm
• ciphertext - scrambled message
• decryption algorithm – inverse of encryption
algorithm
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 Requirements
• two requirements for secure use of symmetric
encryption:
– a strong encryption algorithm
– a secret key known only to sender / receiver
• mathematically have:
Y = E(K, X)
X = D(K, Y)
• assume encryption algorithm is known
• implies a secure channel to distribute key
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 Cryptography
1. Substitution (each element in the plaintext bits, letter is
mapped into another element)
2. Transposition (elements in the plaintext are rearranged)
3. Product (involve multiple stages of substitutions and
transpositions)

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 Classical Substitution Ciphers
• where letters of plaintext are replaced by
other letters or by numbers or symbols

• or if plaintext is viewed as a sequence of bits,

then substitution involves replacing plaintext
bit patterns with ciphertext bit patterns

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 Caesar Cipher
• Substitution ciphers form the first of the
fundamental building blocks

• Core idea is to replace one basic unit

(letter/byte) with another

• Whilst the early Greeks described several

substitution ciphers
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 Caesar Cipher
• First attested use in military affairs of one was
by Julius Caesar

• Still call any cipher using a simple letter shift a

caesar cipher, not just those with shift 3.

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 Cryptanalysis
• objective to recover key not just message
• general approaches:
– cryptanalytic attack
– brute-force attack
• if either succeed all key use compromised

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 Cryptanalytic Attacks
 ciphertext only
 only know algorithm & ciphertext, is statistical,
know or can identify plaintext
 known plaintext
 know/suspect plaintext & ciphertext
 chosen plaintext
 select plaintext and obtain ciphertext
 chosen ciphertext
 select ciphertext and obtain plaintext
 chosen text
 select plaintext or ciphertext to en/decrypt
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 Caesar Cipher
• earliest known substitution cipher
• replaces each letter by 3rd letter on
• example:
meet me after the toga party
PHHW PH DIWHU WKH WRJD SDUWB

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 Caesar Cipher
meet me after the toga party
PHHW PH DIWHU WKH WRJD SDUWB
• m n o P
• e f g H
• e f g H
• t u v W

• m n o P
• e f g H
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 Caesar Cipher
meet me after the toga party
PHHW PH DIWHU WKH WRJD SDUWB
• a b c D
• f g h I
• t u v W
• e f g H
• r s t U

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 Caesar Cipher
meet me after the toga party
PHHW PH DIWHU WKH WRJD SDUWB
• t u v W
• h i j K
• e f g H

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 Caesar Cipher
meet me after the toga party
PHHW PH DIWHU WKH WRJD SDUWB
• t u v W
• o p q R
• g h i J
• a b c D

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 Caesar Cipher
meet me after the toga party
PHHW PH DIWHU WKH WRJD SDUWB
• p q r S
• a b c D
• r s t U
• t u v W
• y z a B (again start from a)

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 Caesar Cipher
• can define transformation as:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
DE F GHIJ KLMNOPQ RSTUVWXYZAB C

• mathematically give each letter a number

abcdefghij k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

• Example: howdy (7,14,22,3,24) encrypted

using key f (ie a shift of 5) is MTBID

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 Caesar Cipher
• mathematically give each letter a number
abcdefghij k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

• Example: howdy (7,14,22,3,24) encrypted

using key f (ie a shift of 5) is MTBID
• 7 8 9 10 11 12
• 14 15 16 17 18 19
• 22 23 24 25 0 1
• 3 4 5 6 7 8
• 24 25 0 1 2 3
(12,19,1,8,3)

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 Cryptanalysis of Caesar Cipher
• Example "GCUA VQ DTGCM" when broken
gives "easy to break", with a shift of 2 (key C)
• efG
• abC
• st U
• yz A

• t uV
• opQ
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 Cryptanalysis of Caesar Cipher
• Example "GCUA VQ DTGCM" when broken
gives "easy to break", with a shift of 2 (key C)
• bcD
• r s T
• ef G
• abC
• k lM

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 Cryptanalysis of Caesar Cipher
 only have 26 possible ciphers
 A maps to A,B,..Z
 could simply try each in turn
 a brute force search
 given ciphertext, just try all shifts of letters
 do need to recognize when have plaintext
 eg. break ciphertext "GCUA VQ DTGCM"

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 1. Brute Force Search
• Brute-force attack involves trying every possible
key until an intelligible translation of the
ciphertext into plaintext is obtained

• On average, half of all possible keys must be tried

to achieve success

• Different time is required to conduct a brute-

force attack, for various common key sizes

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 Brute Force Search

• Data Encryption Standard(DES) is 56

• Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is 128
• Triple-DES is 168

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 Brute Force Search
• always possible to simply try every key
• most basic attack, proportional to key size
• assume either know / recognise plaintext

Key Size (bits) Number of Alternative Time required at 1 Time required at 106
Keys decryption/µs decryptions/µs
32 232 = 4.3  109 231 µs = 35.8 minutes 2.15 milliseconds
56 256 = 7.2  1016 255 µs = 1142 years 10.01 hours
128 2128 = 3.4  1038 2127 µs = 5.4  1024 years 5.4  1018 years

168 2168 = 3.7  1050 2167 µs = 5.9  1036 years 5.9  1030 years

26 characters 26! = 4  1026 2  1026 µs = 6.4  1012 years 6.4  106 years
(permutation)

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 Brute Force Search
• Users of an encryption algorithm can strive for is an
algorithm that meets one or both of the following
criteria:

• The cost of breaking the cipher exceeds the value of

the encrypted information

• The time required to break the cipher exceeds the

useful lifetime of the information

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 Brute Force Search
• An encryption scheme is said to be computationally
secure

• if either of the foregoing two criteria are met

• Unfortunately, it is very difficult to estimate the

amount of effort required to cryptanalyze ciphertext
successfully

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 Brute Force Search
• For each key size, the results are shown assuming
that it takes 1 μs to perform a single decryption

• which is a reasonable order of magnitude for today’s

machines

• With the use of massively parallel organizations of

microprocessors, it may be possible to achieve
processing rates many orders of magnitude greater

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 Brute Force Search
• The final column of Table considers the results for a
system that can process 1 million keys per
microsecond

• And this performance level, DES can no longer be

considered computationally secure.

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 Brute Force Search Example
• One example of a type of brute force attack is known
as a dictionary attack, which might try all the words
in a dictionary.

• Other forms of brute force attack might try

commonly-used passwords or combinations of letters
and numbers. An attack of this nature can be time-
and resource-consuming.

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