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Discrete Mathematics 2003

Lecture 36, 17-October-2003

Introduction to Cryptography
This work is based loosely on Chapter 12 (Number Theory) of the text Security is very important in IT, and a key aspect of this is privacy (or confidentiality) e.g. in credit card transactions on the internet We want secure communication, where only the sender & receiver of a message can understand it This is achieved by encrypting (or enciphering) the message at the sender site, & decrypting (or deciphering) it at the receiver site Hopefully, an intruder who obtains the encrypted message is unable to understand its contents 1

Caesars Cipher
A very early example of encryption is due to Julius Caesar (10044 BC) We call data that is not encrypted plaintext (or cleartext), while encrypted data is ciphertext Caesar encrypted his messages using the table
Plaintext 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 Ciphertext D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A B C

Thus discrete is encrypted as GLVFUHWH, and SULYDFB is decrypted as privacy This cipher is termed a monoalphabetic cipher, since each plaintext letter is always encrypted by 2 the same ciphertext letter

Caesars Cipher (continued)


This example of Caesars cipher involves a shift of each letter of the alphabet by 3 positions There is nothing particularly significant about the use of 3 we could have shifted each letter by 7 positions, or 19 positions, etc Altogether, there are 26 different ciphers that can be constructed using Caesars approach (including the trivial cipher) They can be described in the following way Suppose our cipher involves a shift of each letter by s positions 3

Discrete Mathematics 2003

Lecture 36, 17-October-2003

Caesars Cipher (continued)


Identify a with 1, b with 2, c with 3, , x with 24, y with 25, and z with 0 To encipher a plaintext letter: 1. Encode the letter as its corresponding number 2. Add s to the number 3. If the result is 25, translate it back to a letter 4. If the result is 26, divide it by 26, and translate the remainder back to a letter Examples: Encipher the letters b and x using Caesars cipher with a shift of 6 positions Because of Step 2 above, the Caesar ciphers are 4 known as additive ciphers

Multiplicative Ciphers
A cipher can also be obtained by multiplication by a number t, as follows To encipher a plaintext letter: 1. Encode the letter as its corresponding number 2. Multiply the number by t 3. Use the remainder when this number is divided by 26, and translate it back to a letter If t = 2, we obtain
Plaintext 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 Ciphertext B D F H J L N P R T V X Z B D F H J L N P R T V X Z

Note this is not a useful cipher, as the message 5 LRN could mean fig,fit,sit, etc

Multiplicative Ciphers (cont)


The multiplicative cipher with t = 2 isnt useful because we need to be able to reconstruct the plaintext uniquely from the ciphertext However, if t = 3, we do obtain a useful cipher
Plaintext 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 Ciphertext C F I L O R U X A D G J M P S V Y B E H K N Q T W Z

It can be checked that valid multiplicative ciphers are obtained if t = 1 (the trivial cipher), 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23 and 25 so there are 12 multiplicative ciphers
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Discrete Mathematics 2003

Lecture 36, 17-October-2003

Affine Ciphers
If a message is encrypted with an additive or multiplicative cipher, it would not take an intruder very long to discover the number s or t, and so break the cipher Thus these methods offer very limited security However, the two approaches can be combined: 1. Encode the plaintext letter as a number 2. Add s, and encode the resulting letter as a no. 3. Multiply this number by t, and interpret the result as the ciphertext letter The result is the affine cipher [s, t] e.g: w is encrypted as C in the cipher [8, 11] 7

Affine Ciphers (continued)


There are 26 possible values for s, & 12 possible values for t, so there are 26 12 = 312 different affine ciphers, each identified by the key [s, t] Thus there are many more possible ciphers than before, and a naive approach to deciphering an intercepted message sent with an affine cipher might lead to some frustration However, it would not take too long for an intruder to break the cipher (especially with the help of a computer) So affine ciphers dont offer much security 8

Secret Key Encryption


If we send a message using an affine cipher, then both sender & receiver need to know the secret key (i.e. [s, t]), which is the same for both parties However, the encryption & decryption algorithms are the inverse (or reverse) of each other e.g. if something is added to the data during encryption, then the same amount will be subtracted from the data during decryption An affine cipher is an example of secret key encryption in secret key encryption, the same key is used in encryption & decryption, but the two algorithms are the inverse of each other 9

Discrete Mathematics 2003

Lecture 36, 17-October-2003

Diagram of Secret Key Encryption

(Diagram from Foundations of Computer Science by Behrouz A. Forouzan, Brooks/Cole, 2003, p. 308)
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Data Encryption Standard (DES)


Secret key encryption has been used for more than 2000 years At first the algorithms were simple, and the keys were easy to guess Today, the algorithms are very sophisticated The most common method nowadays is the Data Encryption Standard (DES), developed in the 1970s (essentially by IBM) The method, in which data is scrambled in a very complicated fashion, is used widely, particularly in banking 11

DES (continued)
In DES, the data is transformed into a string of bits (e.g. use ASCII code), which is broken into segments of 64 bits Each segment is then encrypted in a many-stage process that uses a 56-bit key The DES method is a monoalphabetic cipher, since, for a given key, each particular 64-bit plaintext segment is always encrypted as the same 64-bit ciphertext string
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Discrete Mathematics 2003

Lecture 36, 17-October-2003

Secret Key Algorithms


Secret key algorithms are usually efficient they take less time to implement than the alternative public key algorithms well discuss shortly So secret key encryption is especially useful for long messages However, there are 2 disadvantages Firstly, each pair of users must have a secret key so, if n people are to use secret key encryption, there must be n (n 1)/2 secret keys Thus, for 1 million people to communicate, there needs to be about half-a-trillion secret keys!
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Disadvantages of Secret Key Encryption


So the first disadvantage of secret key encryption relates to the management of the secret keys. That is, how can so many keys be kept secret? The second disadvantage is associated with the distribution of the keys i.e. how does the sender securely inform the receiver what the key is? These 2 disadvantages of secret key encryption are addressed in public key encryption, which well introduce in the next lecture 14

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