Cryptography:

Securing the Information Age

Made by:
Mansi Sharma
• Encryption
Plain text  Cipher text
• Decryption
Cipher text  Plain text
 Information Security for…
• Defending against external/internal hackers
• Defending against industrial espionage
• Securing E-commerce
• Securing bank accounts/electronic transfers
• Securing intellectual property
• Avoiding liability
 Threats to Information Security
 Pervasiveness of email/networks

 Online storage of sensitive information

 Insecure technologies (e.g. wireless)

 Trend towards paperless society

Weak legal protection of email privacy

 SYMMETRIC KEY CRYPTOGRAPHY
 Same key used by both the parties

 The sender uses this key and an encription algorithm to encrypt data ; receiver
uses the same key and the corresponding decription algorithm to decrypt the data.

 It is inverse of algorithm of encryption.

 It is often used for long messages

 Public Key Cryptography
• Private (symmetric, secret) key – the same key
used for encryption/decryption
• Problem of key distribution
• Public (asymmetric) key cryptography – a
public key used for encryption and private key
for decryption
• Key distribution problem solved
Authentication and Digital Signatures
• Preventing impostor attacks
• Preventing content tampering
• Preventing timing modification
• Preventing repudiation
By:
• Encryption itself
• Cryptographic checksum and hash functions
 Digital Signatures
• Made by encrypting a message digest
(cryptographic checksum) with the sender’s
private key
• Receiver decrypts with the sender’s public key
(roles of private and public keys are flipped)
 PKI and CA
• Digital signature does not confirm identity
• Public Key Infrastructure provides a trusted
third party’s confirmation of a sender’s
identity
• Certification Authority is a trusted third party
that issues identity certificates
 Problems with CAs and PKI
• Who gave CA the authority to issue
certificates? Who made it “trusted”?
• What good are the certificates?
• What if somebody digitally signed a binding
contract in your name by hacking into your
system?
• How secure are CA’s practices? Can a
malicious hacker add a public key to a CA’s
directory?
 Benefits of Cryptographic Technologies

• Data secrecy
• Data integrity
• Authentication of
message originator
• Electronic certification
and digital signature
• Non-repudiation
Source: http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/h398/matrix.j
 Potential Problems with Cryptographic
Technologies?
• False sense of security if
badly implemented
• Government regulation of
cryptographic
technologies/export
restrictions
• Encryption prohibited in
some countries Source: http://www.tudor-portraits.com/Mary%20Scots%20
How Secure are Today’s Technologies?
• $250,000 machine cracks 56 bit key DES code in 56
hours
• IDEA, RC5, RSA, etc. resist complex attacks when
properly implemented
• distributed.net cracked 64 bit RC5 key (1,757
days and 331,252 people) in July, 2002
• A computer that breaks DES in 1 second will take 149
trillion years to break AES!
• Algorithms are not theoretically unbreakable:
successful attacks in the future are possible
How Secure are Today’s Technologies?

• Encryption does not guarantee security!

• Many ways to beat a crypto system NOT dependent
on cryptanalysis, such as:
– Viruses, worms, hackers, etc.
– TEMPEST attacks,
– Unauthorized physical access to secret keys
• Cryptography is only one element of comprehensive
computer security
 The Future of Secret Writing
Quantum cryptanalysis
– A quantum computer can
perform practically unlimited
number of simultaneous
computations
– Factoring large integers is a
natural application for a quantum
computer (necessary to break
RSA) Source: http://www.media.mit.edu/quanta/5-qubit-molec

– Quantum cryptanalysis would

render ALL modern
cryptosystems instantly obsolete
 When will it happen?
• 2004 – 10-qubit special purpose quantum
computer available
• 2006 – factoring attacks on RSA algorithm
• 2010 through 2012 – intelligence agencies
will have quantum computers
• 2015 – large enterprises will have quantum
computers
Source: The Gartner Group