OS lec: Module 3

Cryptology: The study of cryptography and cryptanalysis Cryptosystem: A cryptosystem is a system for encrypting and decrypting data Cryptography: The art or science concerning the principles, means, and methods for rendering plaintext unintelligible and for converting encrypted messages into intelligible form Cryptanalysis: The science of deducing the plaintext from a cipher text, without knowledge of the key

Cryptographers: People who do cryptography Cryptanalyst: Practitioners of cryptanalysis Encryption: Encryption is the transformation of data, called plain text, readable by anyone, into data, called cipher text, which is only readable by those who have the knowledge of the secret decryption key Decryption: Decryption is the process of converting cipher text into plaintext using the secret decryption key

Block cipher: A cryptosystem in which encryption/decryption is done on blocks of data. The full message is divided into fixed length blocks, then each block is encrypted/decrypted and the blocks are grouped to get the plaintext/cipher text Stream ciphers: An encryption method that uses continuous input, as opposed to fixed length blocks of data.

The Caesar cipher is one of the earliest known and simplest ciphers. The Caesar cipher is named for Julius Caesar, who allegedly used it to protect messages of military significance. It is a type of substitution cipher in which each letter in the plaintext is 'shifted' a certain number of places down the alphabet.

To pass an encrypted message from one person to another, it is first necessary that both parties have the 'key for the cipher, so that the sender may encrypt it and the receiver may decrypt it. For the Caesar cipher, the key(k) is the number of characters to shift the cipher alphabet.

To encrypt: The encryption function is: E(x) = (x + k) Where k is the key (the shift) applied to each letter and x is the letter from plain text

To decrypt: The decryption function is : D(y) = (y - k) Where y is the letter from cipher text
Example: k=1
plaintext : defend the east wall of the castle ciphertext: efgfoe uif fbtu xbmm pg uif dbtumf

Atbash is an ancient encryption system created in the Middle East. It was originally used in the Hebrew language. The Atbash cipher is a simple substitution cipher that relies on transposing all the letters in the alphabet such that the resulting alphabet is backwards. The first letter is replaced with the last letter, the second with the second-last, and so on.

Plaintext: money Ciphertext: nlmvb

To encode a message, each letter of the plaintext is replaced by a group of five of the letters 'A' or 'B'. This replacement is done according to the alphabet of the Baconian cipher, shown below.

Plaintext:
Ciphertext:

insertion ABAAA ABBAA BAAAB AABAA BAAAA BAABA ABAAA ABBAB ABBAA

Applying ROT13 to a piece of text merely requires examining its alphabetic characters and replacing each one by the letter 13 places further along in the alphabet, wrapping back to the beginning if necessary. A becomes N, B becomes O, and so on up to M, which becomes Z, then the sequence continues at the beginning of the alphabet: N becomes A, O becomes B, and so on to Z, which becomes M.

Plaintext: insertion Ciphertext: vafregvba

A Polybius Square is a table that allows someone to translate letters into numbers. To give a small level of encryption, this table can be randomized and shared with the recipient. In order to fit the 26 letters of the alphabet into the 25 spots created by the table, the letters i and j are usually combined.

Plain: insertion (CR approach) Cipher:423334512444424333

A transposition cipher is a method of encryption by which the positions held by units of plaintext(which are commonly characters or groups of characters) are shifted according to a regular system, so that the ciphertext constitutes a permutation of the plaintext. That is, the order of the units is changed.

Plaintext: ILOVEYOU Where: f(position) indicates the position of each character in the plain text fe(position) produces a permutation of the given plain text I L O V EY O U 1342 1342 Given the encryption function fe(2,4,3,1), the ciphertext is VOLIUOYE

The Rail Fence cipher is a form of transposition cipher that gets its name from the way in which it is encoded. In the rail fence cipher, the plaintext is written downwards on successive "rails" of an imaginary fence, then moving up when we get to the bottom.

Using three "rails" and a message of "THIS IS A SECRET MESSAGE" T SACT SG HISRMSE ISEEEAJ

Ciphertext: TSACTSGHISRMSEISEEEAJ

To decipher a message you must know the number of rails that were used to encipher it. You then break up the letters into equal groups for each rail. For example, if you are using 3 rails, you would break the secret message into 3 equal groups. Now you stack the groups on top of each other and read off the message vertically. If you get gibberish, then there are probably some extra letters tacked on the end of the message that are throwing off the grouping. Try removing one letter from the end and try again.

In a route cipher, the plaintext is first written out in a grid of given dimensions, then read off in a pattern given in the key.

Divided in three(3) rows

Key = spiral inwards, clockwise, starting from the top right Ciphertext: EJXCTEDECDAEWRIORFEONALEVSE

To decrypt the cipher text, you must divide the message into the given no. of rows. Then, plot the cipher text using the given key instruction.

Key = spiral inwards, clockwise, starting from the top right

In a columnar transposition, the message is written out in rows of a fixed length, and then read out again column by column, and the columns are chosen in some scrambled order. Both the width of the rows and the permutation of the columns are usually defined by a function.

Plaintext: CRYPTOGRAPHY There are 12 characters. It may be filled in a table that has 3rows by 4 columns. Any spare spaces are filled with nulls or special characters.
3 C T A 4 R O P 1 Y G H 2 P R Y

f(3,4,1,2) is the encryption function. Given the encryption function fe(2,4,3,1), the ciphertext is PRYROPCTAYGH.