Symmetric and asymmetric
cryptography overview
• Modern cryptographic methods use a key to
control encryption and decryption
• Two classes of key-based encryption algorithms
– symmetric (secret-key)
– asymmetric (public-key)
• Symmetric: same key used for encryption and
decryption
• Asymmetric: for encryption a different key is used
for encryption and decryption.
– decryption key cannot be derived from encryption key
Symmetric ciphers
• Main problem: key distribution
• Symmetric ciphers can be devided into
stream ciphers and block ciphers
• Stream ciphers
– can encrypt a single bit of plaintext at a time
• Block ciphers
– take a number of bits and encrypt them as a
single unit
Asymmetric ciphers
• Said to be the most significant new development
in cryptography in the last 300-400 years
– first described publicly by Hellman and Diffie in 1976
• The encryption key is public, decryption key
secret
– anyone can encrypt a message but only the one who
knows the corresponding private key can decrypt it
• In practise asymmetric and symmetric algorithms
are often used together, called hybrid encryption
Algorithm requirements
• The algorithm itself should be known, only
the key is secret
• Key should be random
• With a good algorithm it's impossible to
find the key even if the plaintext and
ciphertext are known
– impossible = takes far to long to go through the
keyspace
Confusion and diffusion
• Shannon: strong ciphers could be built by
combining substitution with transposition
repeatedly
• He described the properties of a cipher as being
confusion and diffusion
– diffusion means spreading the plaintext information
through the ciphertext
• Easiest block ciphers were simple networks that
combined substitution and permutation cicuits, so
called SP-networks
DES – Digital Encryption
Standard
• Widely used symmetric algorithm
• Encrypts a 64-bit block using a 56-bit key
• DES uses diffusion and confusion in many
stages. The algorithm is quite complicated.
• Challange first broken in 1997, took 14000
PCs four months, in 1998 in under a day
• Use the algorithm multiple times with
different keys: 3DES [triple-DES]
AES (Advanced Encryption
Standard)
• Search for a replacement to DES started in
January 1997
• Based on winning algorithm Rijndael, AES
was officially adopted in December 2001
• AES contains a subset of Rijndael's
capabilities (e.g., AES only supports a 128-
bit block size)
AES (Rijndael) overview
• Designed by Belgian cryptographers
Rijmen and Daemen
• Can operate over a variable-length block
using variable-length keys
• Iterated block cipher
– meaning that the initial input block and cipher
key undergoes multiple rounds of
transformation before producing the output
Other common secret key
algorithms
• International Data Encryption Algorithm (IDEA)
– DES-like 64-bit block cipher using 128-bit keys
• RC5
– a block-cipher supporting a variety of block sizes, key
sizes, and number of encryption passes over the data
• Blowfish
– symmetric 64-bit block cipher. Key lengths can vary
from 32 to 448 bits in length
• Twofish
– 128-bit block cipher using 128-, 192-, or 256-bit keys
Asymmetric algorithm
techniques
• One-way functions
– mathematical functions that are easy to
calculate whereas their inverse function is
relatively difficult to calculate
• factorization or descrete logarithms
– 9 x 16 = 144 vs 144 = 9 x 16
– 36 = 729 vs finding x and y so that logx y = 729
RSA (Rivest, Shamir, Adleman)
• One of the more commonly used public key
algorithms
• The RSA algorithm is user to do public key
encryption and digital signatures based on
factoring. The formula is simple, but takes a
long time to calculate.
• RSA is used in most web-browsers as part
of SSL.
Strength of asymmetric
cryptographic primitives.
• Asymmetic crypthographic primitives are
believed to require at least twice the block
length of a symmetric algorithm with
corresponding key length
• Future quantum computers -> factoring and
descrete logarithm computations easy ->
asymmetric cryptography would have to be
abandoned