Faculty of Computer Studies

Course Code: T215B

Course Title: Communication and Information Technologies
– Part B

Midterm Examination
2014-2015/Second

DD- Month-2015

Number of Exam Pages: (4) Time Allowed: 2 hours

(including this cover sheet(

Instructions:

 Total Marks: 90
 Total Number of Questions: 3
 Marks Distribution: Part 1: 9 marks
Part 2: 36 Marks
Part 3: 45 Marks
 Be sure you write your name and ID on the External Answer booklet.
 External materials are NOT allowed
 Calculator is ALLOWED.

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Part 1: Multiple Choice Questions: (1x9 = 9 marks)
Answer all the following Multiple Choice Questions.

1. One aspect of ___________ is whether there are safeguards in place to ensure that
someone else won‟t be able to impersonate.

A. Convenience B. Identity

C. Reliability D. Acceptability

2. An evaluation of ___________ requires us to consider whether the system will function as

expected (and as claimed) and are there effective safeguards in place to monitor its
performance.

A. Convenience B. Identity

C. Reliability D. Acceptability

3. The science of creating codes and ciphers is _______

A. Cryptanalysis B. Cryptography

C. Cryptology D. Encryption

4. Using Caesar cipher, a letter is encrypted using key 21 to produce the letter „C‟, what is
the original letter?

A. „w‟ B. „x‟

C. „y‟ D. „z‟

5. The strength of a cipher is measured by?

A. The complexity of cipher algorithm B. how long it takes to break it.

C. The simplicity of cipher algorithm D. Both A and B

6. What key space is possible by encoding the letters (English letters) as blocks of 3 (or
trigraph)?

A. 78 B. 8

C. 17576 D. 456976

7. What would be the output of combining the 7-bit ASCII code for the letter „N‟
(„1001110‟) with the randomly generated coding data 1110001 using the XOR process?

A. 0110001 B. 1000000

C. 0001110 D. 0111111

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8. One of the following is a correct regarding Electronic Codebook (ECB)

A. Each block uses different key based on the previous block output.

B. The encryption of each block is dependent from the other blocks.

C. ECB is not practical when data involves long repetitive strings of 1s and 0s, such as a
picture data

D. Two similar blocks of plaintext will result in different blocks of ciphertext

9. A single encryption error in one block is cascaded through to the following blocks, this is
a drawback of:

A. CBC B. ECB

C. Stream ciphers D. Block cipher

Part 2: Essay Questions: (6x6 = 36 marks)

Answer ALL the following questions

1. List three differences between code and cipher?

(1 mark for any three points for Code)
- A code replaces whole words, phrases or groups of symbols with alternatives (or code
words).
- The purpose of creating a code is not always for secrecy.
- A code is used simply as an abbreviation
- A code is used to provide an alternative way of communicating information.
- A code is the output of an encoding process (the reverse is decoding) and generally
relies on sets of look-up tables (codebooks) for the conversion processes

(1 mark for each point for cipher)

- A cipher is the output of an encryption process that either replaces data symbols with
alternative symbols, or rearranges existing symbols.
- The operation used to create a cipher is systematic (i.e. follows some set rules).
- A cipher is almost always created for reasons of secrecy.
2. A) What is the difference between Public Key and Private Key in the Asymmetric key
system? (3 marks)
- One of the keys is made public – Public Key: perhaps post it on a website or send it
out in an email message to all contacts
- The other key is kept private – Private Key: unpublished key should remain secret
(1.5 marks for each point)

B) What are the drawbacks of a Public key systems? (3 marks)

- The keys are long in order to provide the required resistance to cryptanalysis

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 - This imposes a processing overhead (processing is more complicated)
- The time needed for encryption/decryption increases (compared with symmetric
systems).
(1 mark for each point)
3. What are the characteristics of hash function?
- One way function
- Even a small alteration in the hash function‟s input M should result in a completely
different hash.
- It should be extremely difficult to find a different variable length string M‟ ≠ M that
would compute to the same hash function H(M).
(2 marks for each point)

4. Gait is the way someone walks so it is considered as a behavioural biometric, what are
advantages and disadvantages of Gait?

Advantages:

- Can be captured at a distance.

- Can be captured without the subject‟s knowledge.

Disadvantages:

- It is relatively difficult to capture, normally involving working on a video sequence.

- It is also computationally intensive and so not suitable for real-time authentication

(1.5 marks for each point)

5. Define Substitution cipher and Transposition cipher; give an example for each one.
- Substitution cipher: The encryption process systematically manipulates a symbol (or
a group of symbols) in the plaintext to produce a different symbol (or group of
symbols), which becomes the ciphertext. Such as Caesar cipher…
(2.5 marks for the definition and 0.5 for the example)
- Transposition cipher: The encryption process „scrambles’ the order of the symbols of
the plaintext in some systematic way. Such as columnar transposition cipher…
(2.5 marks for the definition and 0.5 for the example)
6. A) Define both block cipher and stream cipher? (2 marks)
Block cipher breaks the plaintext into equal-sized blocks, usually of 64 or 128 bits, and
encrypts each block separately to produce a ciphertext output exactly equal in length to
the input. (1 mark)

Stream ciphers operate on very small segments of data – usually at the bit level (1 mark)

B) List one example of block cipher? (1 mark)

Example: ECB and CBC (1 mark)

C) List two advantages of stream cipher? (2 marks)

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 - can encrypt „on the fly‟ one bit (or sometimes one byte) at a time
- Stream ciphers are generally faster than block ciphers, and are less complex to
implement in hardware
(1 mark for each point)

D) List one condition that determines where to use stream cipher? (1 mark)

- the input stream length is unpredictable (such as in telecommunications).

- the input buffering is limited.

(1 mark for any point)

Part 3: Problems: (45 marks)

Answer ALL the following questions

1. A) A manager of the X-Bank received the following message “RQBQDSUYIHUQTO”

by his employee, the manager and the employee agreed to use Caesar Cipher for
encryption and decryption, help the manager to decrypt the message if you know that the
employee used the key of 16 for encryption, write the final answer as readable sentence.
Show your work in details (as table). (13 marks)
Use the following table to help you find the code of letters:

Decryption key = 26 – 16 = 10 (1.5 mark)

p ≡ C + 10 mod 26 (1 mark)

Ciphertext R Q B Q D S U Y I H U Q T O
code 17 16 1 16 3 18 20 24 8 7 20 16 19 14
C + 10
1 0 11 0 13 2 4 8 18 17 4 0 3 24
Mode 26
P b a l a n c e i s r e a d y

(3 marks for each correct row)

The message is “balance is ready” (1.5 mark)

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B) The same manager decided to use the Caesar Cipher with digraph coding to encrypt the
plaintext “accept”, assuming a key of 501, what is the ciphertext? Show your work in details
and write the final ciphertext as one message. (19 marks)

c ≡ p + K mod 676
c ≡ p + 501 mod 676 (1 mark)

„ac‟ encryption:

pac = pa x 26 + pc = (0 x 26) + 2 = 2 (1 mark)

cac ≡ pac + K mod 676 ≡ 2 + 501 mod 676 ≡ 503 mode 676 (2marks)
503/26 = 19 + 9/26 (1 mark)
P1 = 19 equivalent to letter „T‟ (0.5 mark)
P2 = 9 equivalent to letter „J‟ (0.5 mark)
The ciphertext digraph of „ac‟ is „TJ‟ (0.5 mark)

„ce‟ encryption:

Pce = pc x 26 + pe = (2 x 26) + 4 = 52 + 4 = 56
Cce ≡ pce + K mod 676 ≡ 56 + 501 mod 676 ≡ 557 mode 676
557/26 = 21 + 11/26
P1 = 21 equivalent to letter „V‟
P2 = 11 equivalent to letter „L‟
The ciphertext digraph of „ce‟ is „VL‟

„pt‟ encryption:

Ppt = pp x 26 + pt = (15 x 26) + 19 = 390 + 19 = 409

Cpt ≡ ppt+ K mod 676 ≡ 409 + 501 mod 676 ≡ 910 mode 676 ≡ 234 mode 676
234/26 = 9 + 0/26
P1 = 9 equivalent to letter „J‟
P2 = 0 equivalent to letter „A‟
The ciphertext digraph of „pt‟ is „JA‟

So „accept‟ is encrypted as „ TJVLJA‟ (1.5 marks)

2 A fast computer is used to break a ciphertext (A) using columnar transposition cipher that
needs 110 attempts, the speed of processor is 2 MIPS (million instructions per second),
and each attempt needs 4 instructions, another computer of speed 5 MIPS is used to break
ciphertext (B) using Caeser Cipher that needs 100 attempts, and each attempt needs 7

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 instructions for ciphertext (B), which ciphertext will be broken first (consider the worst
case, i.e. the last attempt is the successful one), write your answer in details? (13 marks)

Ciphertext (A):
Total number of instructions = 110 x 4 = 440 (3 marks)
Time = 440 / (2 x10^6) = 0.22 ms (3 marks)

Ciphertext (B):
Total number of instructions = 100 x 7 = 700 (3 marks)
Time = 700 / (5 x10^6) = 0.14 ms (3 marks)
0.14 < 0.22  Ciphertext (B) will be broken first. (1 mark)

End of MTA Exam

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