Recall Techniques for Cipher design

Substitution
permutations on texts

Transposition
permutations on places

We have discussed substitution-based Ciphers

Mono-Alphabetic Ciphers Caesar/shift Poly-Graphic Ciphers Playfair Cipher (keyed-table lookup) Hill Cipher (matrix-multiplication operation)
Poly-Alphabetic Ciphers Vigenere Cipher

Transposition Methods
Permutations on places.
Key: the indication of the transposition mapping.

Rail-Fence Cipher
Method: Plaintext is written down as a sequence of diagonals and then read of as a sequence of rows Plaintext: we will meet on monday Example: w w l m e o m n a e i l e t n o d y Ciphertext: wwlmeomnaeiletnody

Repeated Row-Column Cipher

Plaintext is written in a rectangle, row by row, and ciphertext is read from the rectangle, column by column, in a permuted column order.

Key : Plaintext: Table

2 w l o d

5 e m n a

4 w e m y

1 i e o X

3 l t n X

we will meet on monday

Ciphertext:

ieoXwlodltnxwemyemna

Repeat the row-column transposition several times

Weaknesses in Transposition Methods

Transposition cipher can be easily recognized, because it has the same letter appearance frequencies as the original text. Appearance frequencies of digrams or trigrams may also be useful in breaking the code. Frequent plaintext words may repeat at same locations in many places, which will result in repetition of certain letter combinations in the ciphertext.

Key can be determined by placing the ciphertext in a rectangle and playing with the rows and the columns.

Rotor Machines
Rotor Machines combine principles of Substitution and Transposition Methods. Rotor Machines generate ciphers that are difficult to break. Rotor Machines in World War II: Enigma used by the German. Purple used by the Japanese. The breaking of both Rotor Machines by the Allies was a significant factor in the outcome of the war.

Rotor Machines
Rotor Machine is a set of L independent rotating cylinders, each having 26 input pins and 26 output pins, with internal wiring that connects each input pin to a unique output pin.

Each cylinder implements a fixed permutation between its 26 input pins and its 26 output pins.
The 26 rotations of a cylinder implement 26 permutations. The set of L cylinders implements 26L permutations.

Rotor Machine (3 cylinders)

A B C

A B C

B
C .

.
. .

.
. .

.
P .

.
. Y

.
X Y

.
Y Z

Z
Maps: AX, BY, , ZB

Enigma Machine
Uses 3 cylinders, each of which has 26 input pins and 26 output pins, totaling 263 = 17,576 permutations and has a reflector at the end.

A plaintext letter typed at the keyboard goes through 3 cylinders. Decryption is mirror image of Encryption. If letter X is mapped to letter Y then letter Y returns back to letter X.

Enigma Machine (Initial Setting : Key)

The key of the Rotor Machine consists of the order of the L cylinders. Since number of permutations (17,576) was not considered high enough the design of the Enigma machines allowed swapping the 3 cylinders. This multiplied the number of initial settings by 3! = 6

In addition, there were 6 plug-board cables that enabled swapping pairs of letters at the keyboard. This multiplied the number of initial options by 1011
Total number of initial settings of the Enigma Machine is about ~ 1016

Enigma Machine
German Military Version of Enigma Machine: In 1939, the Germans increased the Enigma security Use of 3 out of 5 cylinders increased number of options from 6 to 60 Use of 10 instead of 6 plug-board cables increased number of options by another factor of about 103 Total number of initial settings of the German Military Enigma Machine is about 1.59 x 1020 Polish cryptanalysts werent able to crack the Enigma anymore In the early 1940s, the British were able to crack the Enigma

Source : http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/NSA-Comb.html

Recommended Readings
Enigma : http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/NSA-Comb.html