1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Cryptography
Cryptography is the science of keeping information secure by
transforming it into form that unintended recipients cannot
understand.
It is an encryption system where the sender and receiver of message use a single common key to
encrypt and decrypt messages.
Symmetric Key Systems are faster and simpler but the problem is that sender and receiver have to
somehow exchange key in a secure manner. Key will be transferred via secured channel.
The most popular symmetric key cryptography system is Data Encryption System (DES).
Under this system a pair of keys is used to encrypt and decrypt information.
A public key is used for encryption and a private key is used for decryption.
Even if the public key is known by everyone the intended receiver can only decode it because he
alone knows the private key.
Cryptography - Operations
1. Transposition - rearrange the order of letters in a message (e.g., 'hello world'
becomes 'ehlol owrdl' in a trivially simple rearrangement scheme)
An early substitution cipher was the Caesar cipher, in which each letter in the
plaintext was replaced by a letter some fixed number of positions further down
the alphabet.
Cryptography – Way of processing
Stream cipher - Converts the plain text into cipher text by taking 1 byte (bit by
bit conversion) of plain text at a time.
o Generally, stream cipher uses 8 bits.
o Stream cipher can be designed to operate on one bit at a time or on units larger than a
byte at a time.
o Symmetric key cipher
Block cipher - Converts the plain text into cipher text by taking plain text’s block
at a time.
o Block cipher uses either 64 bits or more than 64 bits. Block size depends on the
encryption algorithm used.
o Symmetric key cipher
o Example:
◦ DES – 64 bits
◦ AES – 128 bits.
Conventional Encryption
Symmetric key cryptography
Single key (secret key or private key) is used to perform
both encryption and decryption.
Key should be known to both sender and receiver.
In conventional encryption model, there should be atleast
two parties.
Let sender be Alice and receiver be Bob.
Alice converts plaintext into cipher text and and send to
Bob. To do this conversion, encryption algorithm takes 2
parameters as input.
Original plain text message (P) and Key (K)
Key is generated independently of the plain text.
Conventional Encryption