1. What are the essential ingredients of a symmetric cipher?

Plaintext
Encryption Algorithm
Secret Key
Cipher text
Decryption Algorithm

2. How many keys are required for two people to communicate via a symmetric cipher?

1 key is needed for symmetric cipher.

3. What are the two principle requirements for the secure use of symmetric encryption?

Strong encryption algorithm

Sender and receiver must have copies of the secret key.

4. List three approaches to message authentication.

Using Conventional encryption,

Public-key encryption
Secret value

5. What is a message authentication code?

Small block of data that is attached to a message that assures that the sender is authentic and
the message is unaltered.

6. What properties must a hash function have to be useful for message authentication?

H can be applied to a block of data of any size

H produces a fixed-length output
H(x) is relatively easy to compute for any given x, making both hardware and software
implementations practical.
For any given code h, it is computationally infeasible to find x such that H(x) =h. This is called
one-way property.
For any given block x, it is computationally infeasible to find y x, with H(y) =H(x). This is called
weak collision resistant.
It is computationally infeasible to find any pair (x, y) such that H(x) = H(y). This is called strong
collision resistant.

7. What are the principle ingredients of a public-key cryptosystem?

Encryption/Decryption Alogrithm
Plaintext/Ciphertext
Public and Private Key

8. List and define three uses of a public-key cryptosystem.

Encryption/Decryption : sender encrypts message with the recipients public key.

Digital signature: sender signs a message with its private key
Key exchange: two sides exchange a session key.
9. What is the difference between a private key and a secret key?

Secret key is a conventional encryption (symmetric)

Private Key is the matching pair to the public key

10. What is a digital signature?

It is a mechanism for authenticating a message

11. What is a public-key certificate?

It contains a user ID of the public key owner with a block signed by the CA. The user then
publishes the certificate. Anyone needing the users public can obtain the certificate and verify
that it is valid by means of the attached signature.

12. How can public-key encryption be used to distribute a secret key?

Digital Envelope - Bob does the following:

Prepare a message
Generate a random symmetric key that will be used this time only.
Encrypt that message using symmetric key encryption with the one-time key. Encrypt
the one-time key using public-key encryption with Alice's public key. - Attach the
encrypted one-time key to the encrypted message and send it to Alice.