Professional Documents
Culture Documents
IT430 Assignment No2 Idea Solution by Fuad Net
IT430 Assignment No2 Idea Solution by Fuad Net
Question:-
What are the steps involved in symmetric cryptography? Also
explain key management in conventional cryptography using some
example.
Answer
What is cryptography? (for understanding)
Cryptography is the science of using mathematics to encrypt and decrypt data. Cryptography
enables you to store sensitive information or transmit it across insecure networks (like the
Internet) so that it cannot be read by anyone except the intended recipient.
While cryptography is the science of securing data, cryptanalysis is the science of analyzing and
breaking secure communication. Classical cryptanalysis involves an interesting combination of
analytical reasoning, application of mathematical tools, pattern finding, patience, determination,
and luck. Cryptanalysts are also called attackers.
Caesar's Cipher
An extremely simple example of conventional cryptography is a substitution cipher. A substitution cipher
substitutes one piece of information for another. This is most frequently done by offsetting letters of the
alphabet. Two examples are Captain Midnight's Secret Decoder Ring, which you may have owned when you
were a kid, and Julius Caesar's cipher. In both cases, the algorithm is to offset the alphabet and the key is the
number of characters to offset it.
For example, if we encode the word "SECRET" using Caesar's key value of 3, we offset the
alphabet so that the 3rd letter down (D) begins the alphabet.
So starting with
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
DEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABC
Using this scheme, the plaintext, "SECRET" encrypts as "VHFUHW." To allow someone else to
read the ciphertext, you tell them that the key is 3.
.The Data Encryption Standard (DES) and the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) are
block cipher designs which have been designated cryptography standards by the US government
(though DES's designation was finally withdrawn after the AES was adopted).Despite its
deprecation as an official standard, DES (especially its still-approved and much more
secure triple-DES variant) remains quite popular; it is used across a wide range of applications,
from ATM encryptio to e-mail privacy and secure remote access. Many other block ciphers have
been designed and released, with considerable variation in quality. Many have been thoroughly
broken; see Category:Block ciphers.
Stream ciphers, in contrast to the 'block' type, create an arbitrarily long stream of key material,
which is combined with the plaintext bit-by-bit or character-by-character, somewhat like the one-
time pad. In a stream cipher, the output stream is created based on a hidden internal state which
changes as the cipher operates. That internal state is initially set up using the secret key
material. RC4 is a widely used stream cipher; see Category:Stream ciphers.[13] Block ciphers
can be used as stream ciphers; see Block cipher modes of operation.
‐ Triple DES is a variant of DES, Triple DES, provides significantly enhanced security by
executing the core DES algorithm three times in a row. The effect of making the DES encryption
much more difficult to brute force. Triple‐DES is estimated to be 2 to the 56th times more
difficult to break than DES. Triple DES can still be considered a secure encryption algorithm.
Triple DES is also written as 3‐DES or 3DES.