1. Applied Cryptography (Symmetric)
Part I

2. —The Golden Bough, Sir James George Frazer
Many savages at the present day regard their names as vital parts of themselves, and therefore take great pains to conceal their real names, lest these should give to evil-disposed persons a handle by which to injure their owners.
—The Golden Bough, Sir James George Frazer
Opening quote.

3. Symmetric Encryption or conventional / private-key / single-key
sender and recipient share a common key
all classical encryption algorithms are private-key
was the only type prior to the invention of public-key in 1970’s
and by far most widely used
Symmetric encryption, also referred to as conventional encryption or single-key encryption, was the only type of encryption in use prior to the development of public-key encryption in the 1970s. It remains by far the most widely used of the two types of encryption. All traditional schemes are symmetric / single key / private-key encryption algorithms, with a single key, used for both encryption and decryption. Since both sender and receiver are equivalent, either can encrypt or decrypt messages using that common key.

4. 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
Briefly review some terminology used throughout the course.

5. Symmetric Cipher Model
Detail the five ingredients of the symmetric cipher model, shown in Stallings Figure 2.1:
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

6. Requirements two requirements for secure use of symmetric encryption:
a strong encryption algorithm
a secret key known only to sender / receiver
mathematically have:
Y = EK(X)
X = DK(Y)
assume encryption algorithm is known
implies a secure channel to distribute key
We assume that it is impractical to decrypt a message on the basis of the cipher- text plus knowledge of the encryption/decryption algorithm, and do not need to keep the algorithm secret; rather we only need to keep the key secret. This feature of symmetric encryption is what makes it feasible for widespread use. It allows easy distribution of s/w and h/w implementations.
Can take a closer look at the essential elements of a symmetric encryption scheme: mathematically it can be considered a pair of functions with: plaintext X, ciphertext Y, key K, encryption algorithm EK, decryption algorithm DK.

7. Cryptography Classify cryptographic system by:
type of encryption operations used
substitution / transposition / product
number of keys used
single-key or private / two-key or public
way in which plaintext is processed
block / stream
Cryptographic systems can be characterized along these three independent dimensions.

8. Cryptanalysis objective to recover key not just message
general approaches:
cryptanalytic attack
brute-force attack
Typically objective is to recover the key in use rather then simply to recover the plaintext of a single ciphertext.
There are two general approaches:
Cryptanalytic attacks rely on the nature of the algorithm plus perhaps some knowledge of the general characteristics of the plaintext or even some sample plaintext-ciphertext pairs.
Brute-force attacks try every possible key on a piece of ciphertext until an intelligible translation into plaintext is obtained. On average,half of all possible keys must be tried to achieve success.

9. More Definitions unconditional security computational security
no matter how much computer power or time is available, the cipher cannot be broken since the ciphertext provides insufficient information to uniquely determine the corresponding plaintext
computational security
given limited computing resources (eg time needed for calculations is greater than age of universe), the cipher cannot be broken
Two more definitions are worthy of note. An encryption scheme is unconditionally secure if the ciphertext generated by the scheme does not contain enough information to determine uniquely the corresponding plaintext, no matter how much ciphertext is available. An encryption scheme is said to be computationally secure if either the cost of breaking the cipher exceeds the value of the encrypted information, or the time required to break the cipher exceeds the useful lifetime of the information. Unconditional security would be nice, but the only known such cipher is the one-time pad (later).
For all reasonable encryption algorithms, we have to assume computational security where it either takes too long, or is too expensive, to bother breaking the cipher.

10. Number of Alternative Keys Time required at 1 decryption/µs
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 Keys
Time required at 1 decryption/µs
Time required at 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 (permutation)
26! = 4  1026
2  1026 µs = 6.4  1012 years
6.4  106 years
A 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. Stallings Table 2.2 shows how much time is required to conduct a brute-force attack, for various common key sizes (DES is 56, AES is 128, Triple-DES is 168, plus general mono-alphabetic cipher), where either a single system or a million parallel systems, are used.

11. Modern Block Ciphers now look at modern block ciphers
one of the most widely used types of cryptographic algorithms
provide secrecy /authentication services
focus on DES (Data Encryption Standard)
to illustrate block cipher design principles
Modern block ciphers are widely used to provide encryption of quantities of information, and/or a cryptographic checksum to ensure the contents have not been altered. We continue to use block ciphers because they are comparatively fast, and because we know a fair amount about how to design them. Will use the widely known DES algorithm to illustrate some key block cipher design principles.

12. Block vs Stream Ciphers
block ciphers process messages in blocks, each of which is then en/decrypted
like a substitution on very big characters
64-bits or more
stream ciphers process messages a bit or byte at a time when en/decrypting
many current ciphers are block ciphers
broader range of applications
Block ciphers work a on block / word at a time, which is some number of bits. All of these bits have to be available before the block can be processed. Stream ciphers work on a bit or byte of the message at a time, hence process it as a “stream”. Block ciphers are currently better analysed, and seem to have a broader range of applications, hence focus on them.

13. Block Cipher Principles
most symmetric block ciphers are based on a Feistel Cipher Structure
block ciphers look like an extremely large substitution
would need table of 264 entries for a 64-bit block
Instead, create from smaller building blocks
using idea of a product cipher
Most symmetric block encryption algorithms in current use are based on a structure referred to as a Feistel block cipher. A block cipher operates on a plaintext block of n bits to produce a ciphertext block of n bits. An arbitrary reversible substitution cipher for a large block size is not practical, however, from an implementation and performance point of view. In general, for an n-bit general substitution block cipher, the size of the key is n x 2n. For a 64-bit block, which is a desirable length to thwart statistical attacks, the key size is 64 x 264 = 270 = 1021 bits. In considering these difficulties, Feistel points out that what is needed is an approximation to the ideal block cipher system for large n, built up out of components that are easily realizable.

14. Ideal Block Cipher
Feistel refers to an n-bit general substitution as an ideal block cipher, because it allows for the maximum number of possible encryption mappings from the plaintext to ciphertext block. A 4-bit input produces one of 16 possible input states, which is mapped by the substitution cipher into a unique one of 16 possible output states, each of which is represented by 4 ciphertext bits. The encryption and decryption mappings can be defined by a tabulation, as shown in Stallings Figure 3.1. It illustrates a tiny 4-bit substitution to show that each possible input can be arbitrarily mapped to any output - which is why its complexity grows so rapidly.

15. Claude Shannon and Substitution-Permutation Ciphers
Claude Shannon introduced idea of substitution-permutation (S-P) networks in 1949 paper
form basis of modern block ciphers
S-P nets are based on the two primitive cryptographic operations seen before:
substitution (S-box)
permutation (P-box)
provide confusion & diffusion of message & key
Claude Shannon’s 1949 paper has the key ideas that led to the development of modern block ciphers. Critically, it was the technique of layering groups of S-boxes separated by a larger P-box to form the S-P network, a complex form of a product cipher. He also introduced the ideas of confusion and diffusion, notionally provided by S-boxes and P-boxes (in conjunction with S-boxes).

16. Confusion and Diffusion
cipher needs to completely obscure statistical properties of original message
a one-time pad does this
more practically Shannon suggested combining S & P elements to obtain:
diffusion – dissipates statistical structure of plaintext over bulk of ciphertext
confusion – makes relationship between ciphertext and key as complex as possible
The terms diffusion and confusion were introduced by Claude Shannon to capture the two basic building blocks for any cryptographic system. Every block cipher involves a transformation of a block of plaintext into a block of ciphertext, where the transformation depends on the key. The mechanism of diffusion seeks to make the statistical relationship between the plaintext and ciphertext as complex as possible in order to thwart attempts to deduce the key. Confusion seeks to make the relationship between the statistics of the ciphertext and the value of the encryption key as complex as possible, again to thwart attempts to discover the key.
So successful are diffusion and confusion in capturing the essence of the desired attributes of a block cipher that they have become the cornerstone of modern block cipher design.

17. Feistel Cipher Structure
Horst Feistel devised the feistel cipher
based on concept of invertible product cipher
partitions input block into two halves
process through multiple rounds which
perform a substitution on left data half
based on round function of right half & subkey
then have permutation swapping halves
implements Shannon’s S-P net concept
Horst Feistel, working at IBM Thomas J Watson Research Labs devised a suitable invertible cipher structure in early 70's.
One of Feistel's main contributions was the invention of a suitable structure which adapted Shannon's S-P network in an easily inverted structure. It partitions input block into two halves which are processed through multiple rounds which perform a substitution on left data half, based on round function of right half & subkey, and then have permutation swapping halves. Essentially the same h/w or s/w is used for both encryption and decryption, with just a slight change in how the keys are used. One layer of S-boxes and the following P-box are used to form the round function.

18. Feistel Cipher Structure
Stallings Figure 3.2 illustrates the classical feistel cipher structure, with data split in 2 halves, processed through a number of rounds which perform a substitution on left half using output of round function on right half & key, and a permutation which swaps halves, as listed previously.

19. Feistel Cipher Design Elements
block size
key size
number of rounds
subkey generation algorithm
round function
fast software en/decryption
ease of analysis
The exact realization of a Feistel network depends on the choice of the following parameters and design features:
block size - increasing size improves security, but slows cipher
key size - increasing size improves security, makes exhaustive key searching harder, but may slow cipher
number of rounds - increasing number improves security, but slows cipher
subkey generation algorithm - greater complexity can make analysis harder, but slows cipher
round function - greater complexity can make analysis harder, but slows cipher
fast software en/decryption - more recent concern for practical use
ease of analysis - for easier validation & testing of strength

20. Feistel Cipher Decryption
The process of decryption with a Feistel cipher, as shown in Stallings Figure 3.3, is essentially the same as the encryption process. The rule is as follows: Use the ciphertext as input to the algorithm, but use the subkeys Ki in reverse order. That is, use Kn in the first round, Kn–1 in the second round, and so on until K1 is used in the last round. This is a nice feature because it means we need not implement two different algorithms, one for encryption and one for decryption.

21. Data Encryption Standard (DES)
most widely used block cipher in world
adopted in 1977 by NIST
as FIPS PUB 46
encrypts 64-bit data using 56-bit key
has widespread use
has been considerable controversy over its security
The most widely used private key block cipher, is the Data Encryption Standard (DES). It was adopted in 1977 by the National Bureau of Standards as Federal Information Processing Standard 46 (FIPS PUB 46). DES encrypts data in 64-bit blocks using a 56-bit key. The DES enjoys widespread use. It has also been the subject of much controversy its security.

22. DES Encryption Overview
The overall scheme for DES encryption is illustrated in Stallings Figure3.4, which takes as input 64-bits of data and of key.
The left side shows the basic process for enciphering a 64-bit data block which consists of:
- an initial permutation (IP) which shuffles the 64-bit input block
- 16 rounds of a complex key dependent round function involving substitutions & permutations
- a final permutation, being the inverse of IP
The right side shows the handling of the 56-bit key and consists of:
- an initial permutation of the key (PC1) which selects 56-bits out of the 64-bits input, in two 28-bit halves
- 16 stages to generate the 48-bit subkeys using a left circular shift and a permutation of the two 28-bit halves

23. DES Round Structure uses two 32-bit L & R halves
as for any Feistel cipher can describe as:
Li = Ri–1
Ri = Li–1  F(Ri–1, Ki)
Function F takes 32-bit R half and 48-bit subkey:
expands R to 48-bits using permutation E
adds to subkey using XOR
passes through 8 S-boxes to get 32-bit result
finally permutes using 32-bit perm P
Detail here the internal structure of the DES round function F, which takes R half & subkey, and processes them through E, add subkey, S & P.
This follows the classic structure for a feistel cipher.
Note that the s-boxes provide the “confusion” of data and key values, whilst the permutation P then spreads this as widely as possible, so each S-box output affects as many S-box inputs in the next round as possible, giving “diffusion”.

24. DES Round Structure
Stallings Figure 3.6 illustrates the internal structure of the DES round function F. The R input is first expanded to 48 bits by using expansion table E that defines a permutation plus an expansion that involves duplication of 16 of the R bits (Stallings Table 3.2c). The resulting 48 bits are XORed with Ki. This 48-bit result passes through a substitution function comprising 8 S-boxes which each map 6 input bits to 4 output bits, producing a 32-bit output, which is then permuted by permutation P as defined by Stallings Table 3.2d.

25. Substitution Boxes S have eight S-boxes which map 6 to 4 bits
each S-box is actually 4 little 4 bit boxes
outer bits 1 & 6 (row bits) select one row of 4
inner bits 2-5 (col bits) are substituted
result is 8 groups of 4 bits, or 32 bits
row selection depends on both data & key
feature known as autoclaving (autokeying)
example:
S( d ) = 5fd25e03
The substitution consists of a set of eight S-boxes, each of which accepts 6 bits as input and produces 4 bits as output. These transformations are defined in Stallings Table 3.3 (Page 79), which is interpreted as follows: The first and last bits of the input to box Si form a 2-bit binary number to select one of four substitutions defined by the four rows in the table for Si. The middle four bits select one of the sixteen columns. The decimal value in the cell selected by the row and column is then converted to its 4-bit representation to produce the output. For example, in S1, for input , the row is 01 (row 1) and the column is 1100 (column 12). The value in row 1, column 12 is 9, so the output is 1001.
The example lists 8 6-bit values (ie 18 in hex is in binary, 09 hex is binary, 12 hex is binary, 3d hex is binary etc), each of which is replaced following the process detailed above using the appropriate S-box. ie
S1(011000) lookup row 00 col 1100 in S1 to get 5
S2(001001) lookup row 01 col 0100 in S2 to get 15 = f in hex
S3(010010) lookup row 00 col 1001 in S3 to get 13 = d in hex
S4(111101) lookup row 11 col 1110 in S4 to get 2 etc s1

26. DES Key Schedule forms subkeys used in each round
initial permutation of the key (PC1) which selects 56-bits in two 28-bit halves
16 stages consisting of:
rotating each half separately either 1 or 2 places depending on the key rotation schedule K
selecting 24-bits from each half & permuting them by PC2 for use in round function F
note practical use issues in h/w vs s/w
The DES Key Schedule generates the subkeys needed for each data encryption round. The 64-bit key input is first processed by Permuted Choice One (Stallings Table 3.4b). The resulting 56-bit key is then treated as two 28-bit quantities C & D. In each round, these are separately processed through a circular left shift (rotation) of 1 or 2bits as shown in Stallings Table 3.4d. These shifted values serve as input to the next round of the key schedule. They also serve as input to Permuted Choice Two (Stallings Table 3.4c), which produces a 48-bit output that serves as input to the round function F.
The 56 bit key size comes from security considerations as we know now. It was big enough so that an exhaustive key search was about as hard as the best direct attack (a form of differential cryptanalysis called a T-attack, known by the IBM & NSA researchers), but no bigger. The extra 8 bits were then used as parity (error detecting) bits, which makes sense given the original design use for hardware communications links. However we hit an incompatibility with simple s/w implementations since the top bit in each byte is 0 (since ASCII only uses 7 bits), but the DES key schedule throws away the bottom bit! A good implementation needs to be cleverer!

27. Avalanche Effect key desirable property of encryption algorithms
where a change of one input or key bit results in changing approx half output bits
making attempts to “home-in” by guessing keys impossible
DES exhibits strong avalanche
A desirable property of any encryption algorithm is that a small change in either the plaintext or the key should produce a significant change in the ciphertext. In particular, a change in one bit of the plaintext or one bit of the key should produce a change in many bits of the ciphertext. If the change were small, this might provide a way to reduce the size of the plaintext or key space to be searched. DES exhibits a strong avalanche effect, as may be seen in Stallings Table 3.5.

28. Stream Ciphers process message bit by bit (as a stream)
have a pseudo random keystream
combined (XOR) with plaintext bit by bit
randomness of stream key completely destroys statistically properties in message
Ci = Mi XOR StreamKeyi
but must never reuse stream key
otherwise can recover messages (cf book cipher)
A typical stream cipher encrypts plaintext one byte (or bit) at a time, usually by XOR’ing with a pseudo-random keystream. The stream cipher is similar to the one-time pad discussed in Chapter 2. The difference is that a one-time pad uses a genuine random number stream, whereas a stream cipher uses a pseudorandom number stream. But rely on the randomness of stream key completely destroys statistically properties in message. However, you must never reuse a stream key since otherwise you can recover messages (as with a book cipher).

29. Stream Cipher Structure
Stallings Figure 6.8 illustrates the general structure of a stream cipher, where a key is input to a pseudorandom bit generator that produces an apparently random keystream of bits, and which are XOR’d with message to encrypt it, and XOR’d again to decrypt it by the receiver.

30. Stream Cipher Properties
some design considerations are:
long period with no repetitions
statistically random
depends on large enough key
large linear complexity
properly designed, can be as secure as a block cipher with same size key
but usually simpler & faster
[KUMA97] lists the following important design considerations for a stream cipher:
The encryption sequence should have a large period, the longer the period of repeat the more difficult it will be to do cryptanalysis.
The keystream should approximate the properties of a true random number stream as close as possible, the more random-appearing the keystream is, the more randomized the ciphertext is, making cryptanalysis more difficult.
To guard against brute-force attacks, the key needs to be sufficiently long. The same considerations as apply for block ciphers are valid here .Thus, with current technology, a key length of at least 128 bits is desirable.
With a properly designed pseudorandom number generator, a stream cipher can be as secure as block cipher of comparable key length. The primary advantage of a stream cipher is that stream ciphers are almost always faster and use far less code than do block ciphers.

31. RC4 a proprietary cipher owned by RSA DSI
another Ron Rivest design, simple but effective
variable key size, byte-oriented stream cipher
widely used (web SSL/TLS, wireless WEP)
key forms random permutation of all 8-bit values
uses that permutation to scramble input info processed a byte at a time
RC4 is a stream cipher designed in 1987 by Ron Rivest for RSA Security. It is a variable key-size stream cipher with byte-oriented operations. The algorithm is based on the use of a random permutation. Analysis shows that the period of the cipher is overwhelmingly likely to be greater than 10^100. Eight to sixteen machine operations are required per output byte, and the cipher can be expected to run very quickly in software. RC4 is probably the most widely used stream cipher. It is used in the SSL/TLS secure web protocol, & in the WEP & WPA wireless LAN security protocols. RC4 was kept as a trade secret by RSA Security, but in September 1994 was anonymously posted on the Internet on the Cypherpunks anonymous r ers list. In brief, the RC4 key is used to form a random permutation of all 8-bit values, it then uses that permutation to scramble input info processed a byte at a time.

32. RC4 Encryption encryption continues shuffling array values
sum of shuffled pair selects "stream key" value from permutation
XOR S[t] with next byte of message to en/decrypt
i = j = 0
for each message byte Mi
i = (i + 1) (mod 256)
j = (j + S[i]) (mod 256)
swap(S[i], S[j])
t = (S[i] + S[j]) (mod 256)
Ci = Mi XOR S[t]
To form the stream key for en/decryption (which are identical), RC4 continues to shuffle the permutation array S by continuing to swap each element in turn with some other entry, and using the sum of these two entry values to select another value from the permutation to use as the stream key, which is then XOR’d with the current message byte.

33. RC4 Overview
Stallings Figure 6.9 (Page 192) illustrates the general structure of RC4. S is a 256-byte state vector. At all times, S contains a permutation of all 8-bit numbers from 0 to 255. K & T are the permutations of S.

34. RC4 Security claimed secure against known attacks
have some analyses, none practical
result is very non-linear
since RC4 is a stream cipher, must never reuse a key
have a concern with WEP, but due to key handling rather than RC4 itself
A number of papers have been published analyzing methods of attacking RC4, but none of these approaches is practical against RC4 with a reasonable key length, such as 128 bits.
A more serious problem occurs in its use in the WEP protocol, not with RC4 itself but the way in which keys are generated for use as input to RC4.
Currently RC4 its regarded as quite secure, if used correctly, with a sufficiently large key.