An Interop Publication ONNEXIONS “t3. The Interoperability Report September 1994 Volume 8, No.9 ConneXions — The Interoperability Report tracks current and emerging standards and technologies within the computer and communications industry. In this issue: Cryptographic Algorithms......2 Security in the IETF... 12 Windows Sockets 2.0. Corporate IP..... DMTF. Announcements. ConneXions is published monthly by Interop Company, a division of 2D Expos, 303 Vintage Park Drive, Foster City, California, 94404-1138, USA. Phone: +4 (415) 578-6900 Fax: +1(415) 525.0194 E-mail: connexions@interop.com ‘Subseription hotline: Copyright © 1994 by Interop Company: Quotation with attribution encouraged ConneXions—The Interoperability Report and the ConneXions logo are registered trademarks of Interop Company. ISSN 0894-5926 From the Editor Welcome to Atlanta and NetWorld-+Interop 94, the fourth stop on our 1994 World Tour. This issue of ConneXions is being provided to all conference, tutorial and exhibition attendees while supplies last. We are pleased to offer a special 20% discount on all new subscriptions. To take advantage of this offer, simply complete the enclosed card and drop it in the mail. For those of you unfamiliar with this public- ation, ConneXions is a monthly technical journal covering all aspects of computer networking and interoperability. It is the companion journal to the conference, and has been published by Interop Com- pany since the first Interop conference in 1987. For an index of back issues, send e-mail to: connexions@interop.com. Our first article this month is a look at cryptographic algorithms for providing security in computer networks. William Stallings describes conventional encryption and provides an overview of the most impor- tant algorithms in this first installment. Next month, public-key cryptography and secure hash functions will be covered. Security is of great importance to the rapidly growing Internet and a number of engineering efforts related to security are underway with- in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Jim Galvin of Trusted Information Systems gives an overview of these activities. The IETF is the primary standards development body for the Internet, and if you are interested in participating in its work you should make note of the information at the end of Dr. Galvin’s article. The Windows Sockets Application Program Interface (API) 1.1 is a sockets-style transport interface for the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems. Inspired by the need for a binary-compatible interface to TCP/IP stacks under Windows, a great deal of momen- tum has built around this API. J. Allard of Microsoft describes work currently being done to extend Windows Sockets to version 2.0. George Abe of Cisco Systems describes the characteristics of what is known as “Corporate IP” as distinct from commercial IP service. Both commercial and corporate IP will continue to play an important role in the global information infrastructure. The Desktop Management Task Force (DMTF) is a consortium of vendors who are working to define operating system independent, open desktop management interfaces. The architecture is described in an article by John McConnell. You will find more information on all of these topics in our extensive conference and tutorial program, and we hope you will continue to receive updates on emerging technology through ConneXions—The Interoperability Report. Enjoy your week in Atlanta!CONNEXIONS Introduction Conventional encryption Back to Basics: Cryptographic Algorithms Part I: Conventional Cryptography by William Stallings A growing proportion of the applications and protocols used over the Internet either have significant, security-related features or have as their primary purpose the provision of some security facility. At the application level, examples include e-mail security (Privacy Enhanced Mail, PEM; Pretty Good Privacy, PGP), network management (Simple Network Management Protocol version 2, SNMPv2), and remote authentication (Kerberos). A common feature of all of these applic - ations and protocols is the use of cryptographic algorithms to imple- ment particular security services. The many such algorithms in use fall into three categories: conventional eneryption algorithms, public- key cryptography algorithms, and secure hash functions, This month's article deals with conventional encryption and provides an overview of important algorithms in each category. Next month, public-key eryp- tography and secure hash functions are covered. Conventional encryption, also referred to as symmetric encryption or single-key encryption, was the only type of encryption in use prior to the development of public-key encryption. It remains by far the most widely used of the two types of eneryption. In conventional eneryption, the original intelligible message, referred to as plaintext, is converted into apparently random nonsense, refer- red to as ciphertext. The encryption process consists of an algorithm and a key. The key is a value independent of the plaintext that con- trols the algorithm. The algorithm will produce a different output depending on the specific key being used at the time. Changing the key changes the output of the algorithm. Once the ciphertext is pro- duced, it is transmitted. Upon reception, the ciphertext can be trans- formed back to the original plaintext by using a decryption algorithm and the same key that was used for eneryption. ‘The security of conventional encryption depends on several factors. First, the encryption algorithm must be powerful enough so that it is impractical to decrypt a message on the basis of the ciphertext alone. Beyond that, the security of conventional encryption depends on the secrecy of the key, not the secrecy of the algorithm. That is, it is assumed that it is impractical to decrypt a message on the basis of the ciphertext plus knowledge of the encryption/decryption algorithm. In other words, we don’t need to keep the algorithm secret; we need to keep only the key secret. This feature of conventional encryption is what makes it feasible for widespread use. The fact that the algorithm need not be kept secret, means that manufacturers can and have developed low-cost chip implementations of data encryption algorithms. These chips are wide- ly available and incorporated into a number of products. With the use of conventional encryption, the principal security problem is main- taining the secrecy of the key. Figure 1 takes a closer look at the essential elements of a conventio- nal encryption scheme. There is some source for a message, which produces a message in plaintext, X = [X,,X,,..., Xy]. The M elements of X are letters in some finite alphabet. Traditionally, the alphabet usually consisted of the 26 capital letters. Nowadays, the binary alphabet (0, 1) is typically used. For eneryption, a key of the form K=IK,,K,,..., K,]is generated.The Interoperability Report Block ciphers If the key is generated at the message source, then it must also be provided to the destination by means of some secure channel. Alterna- tively, a third party could generate the key and securely deliver it to both source and destination. wo be }—>| Enver JY. Se ee 7 Ce} Figure 1: Model of conventional eryptosystem With the message X and the key K as input, the encryption algorithm forms the ciphertext Y =[Y,, Y,,.. . Yvl We can write this as: Y=E,) ‘This notation indicates that Y is produced by using encryption algo- rithm E as a function of the plaintext X, with the specific function determined by the value of the key K. ‘The intended receiver, in possession of the key, is able to invert the transformation: X=D¥) An opponent, observing Y but not having access to K or X, must attempt to recover X or K or both X and K. It is assumed that the opponent does have knowledge of the encryption (B) and decryption (D) algorithms. If the opponent is interested in only this particular message, then the focus of effort is to recover X by generating a plaintext estimate X'. Often, however, the opponent is interested in being able to read future messages as well, in which case an attempt is made to recover K by generating an estimate K’ ‘The most commonly-used conventional encryption algorithms are block ciphers. A block cipher processes the plaintext input in fixed-size blocks, and produces a block of ciphertext of equal size for each plain- text block. Some of the most important block ciphers are listed below. ‘Algorithm Key size (bits) Block size (bits) Example applications used in DES 36 oa Kerberos, PEM, SNMPv2 TripleDES 112 4 PEM IDEA 128 64 PGP SKIPIACK _ 80 64 Clipper Data Eneryprion Standard international Data Eneryption Algorithm vacy Enhanced Mail SNMPv2 = Simple Network Management Protocol, version 2 PGP = Preity Good Privacy Table 1: Noteworthy conventional encryption algorithms continued on next page 3