Introduction to Public-Key Cryptography

Introduction to Cryptography Department of CSE, ISM Dhanbad January 24, 2022 1

 Outline
Overview of Public-key Cryptography
Pros and Cons of public-key cryptography
Essential Number Theory Conclusions
Conclusions

Introduction to Cryptography Department of CSE, ISM Dhanbad January 24, 2022 2

 Motivation
Key Distribution Problem: The key must be
established between Alice and Bob using a
secure channel.
The communication link for the message is not
secure, so sending the key over the channel
directly—which would be the most convenient
way of transporting it— can’t be done.

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 Contd…
Number of Keys: Even if we solve the key distribution
problem, we must potentially deal with a very large
number of keys. If each pair of users needs a separate
pair of keys in a network with n users, there are nC2
key pairs, and every user has to store n−1 keys
securely.
No Protection Against Cheating by Alice or Bob: Alice
and Bob have the same capabilities, since they
possess the same key.

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 Principles of Asymmetric Cryptography

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 Security Mechanisms of Public-Key Algorithms

Encryption: We can encrypt messages using

algorithms such as RSA or Elgamal.
Key Establishment: there are protocols for
establishing secret keys over an insecure channel.
Nonrepudiation: Providing nonrepudiation and
message integrity can be realized with digital
signature algorithms.
Identification: We can identify entities using
challenge-and-response protocols together with
digital signatures,

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 Limitation
Encryption of data using public key
cryptosystem is very computationally intensive.
Block /stream ciphers are much faster than
public-key cryptosystem.
Most practical protocols are hybrid protocols
which incorporate both symmetric and public-
key approaches.

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 Bit lengths of public-key algorithms for different security levels

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 Hybrid Protocols

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 Public-key Cryptography

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 Definitions
One-way function: A function f () is a one-way function if:
y = f (x) is computationally easy, and
x = f -1(y) is computationally infeasible.
In mathematical terms, a function is easy to compute if
it can be evaluated in polynomial time, i.e., its running
time is a polynomial expression.
The inverse computation x = f -1(y) should be so
computationally intensive that it is not feasible to
evaluate it in any reasonable time period,
Thus, having data x it is easy to calculate f(x) but, on
the other hand, knowing the value of f(x) it is quite
difficult to calculate the value of x.
We believe certain functions are one-way functions.

Introduction to Cryptography Department of CSE, ISM Dhanbad January 24, 2022 11

 One Way Function

Integer factorization problem, on

which RSA is based

One way Function Discrete logarithm problem, on

which DHKEP, ElGamal

Elliptic Curve Discrete

logarithm problem

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 Integer factorization problem
Given two large primes, it is easy to compute
the product. However, it is very difficult to
factor the resulting product.
In fact, if each of the primes has 150 or more
decimal digits, the resulting product cannot be
factored, even with thousands of PCs running
for many years.

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 Trapdoor one-way function
Trapdoor one-way functions are types of one-way
functions that contain a kind of "back door" (trapdoor).
As in the case of ordinary one-way functions it is easy
to compute their values for given data but it is very
difficult to compute their inverse functions.
However, if one has some additional secret information,
he can easily compute the inverse function as well.

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 Contd…
When n is large, the function y  x k mod n
is a trapdoor one-way function.
Given x, n, and k , it is easy to calculate y.
There is not a polynomial time solution to the
f-1 function .
If we know the trapdoor k  s.t. k  k   1mod   n 
k
We can compute: x  y mod n

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 Essential Number Theory

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 Contd…

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 Fermat’s Little Theorem
Let a be an integer and p be a prime, then:
p 1
a  1 mod p 
One application is the computation of the
inverse in a finite field. p  2 1
a a  mod p 

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 Euler’s Theorem
A generalization of Fermat’s Little Theorem to
any integer moduli, i.e., moduli that are not
necessarily primes, is Euler’s theorem.
Let a and m be integers with gcd(a,m) = 1, then:
  m
a  1 mod m 
Let m = 12 and a = 5.

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 Conclusions
Public-key algorithms have capabilities that symmetric
ciphers don’t have, in particular digital signature and key
establishment functions.
Public-key algorithms are computationally intensive,
and hence are poorly suited for bulk data encryption.
Only three families of public-key schemes are widely
used. This is considerably fewer than in the case of
symmetric algorithms.
Euler’s phi function gives us the number of elements
smaller than an integer n that are relatively prime to n.
This is an important function for the RSA cryptosystem.

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 !!!Thank You!!!

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