Classical Encryption
Techniques
Transposition Ciphers
A transposition ciphers changes the position of the plaintext using various
techniques to get the cipher text instead of substitution
Rail Fence Technique
Alice wants to send Bob a message as follows: attack is at 3pm today
Key known to both Bob and Alice is 3
Grid is created as follows:
Number of rows = key
Number of columns =characters in the message
a c a m a
t a k s t p t d y
t i 3 o
Rail Cipher - Decryption
Cipher text is : ACAMA TAKSTPTDY TI30
A C A M A
T A K S T P T D Y
T I 3 0
Easy to cryptanalyze
More complex method is to use a key or keyword to change the
order in which the plaintext is encrypted
Transposition cipher
Key used is 4312567 (or a keyword can be used eg:PASWORD)
Plaintext is: attack postponed until two am
4 3 1 2 5 6 7
a t t a c k p
o s t p o n e
d u n t i l t
w o a m x y z
Transpose the columns based on the key to get the cipher text(1234567)
TTNAAPTMTSUOAODWCOIXKNLYPETZ
Repeat the procedure with the ciphertext to achieve double transposition
Polyalphabetic ciphers
Polyalphabetic substitution cipher – one that uses multiple monoalphabetic
substitutions for the plaintext message
All such ciphers have the following features
Set of related monoalphabetic substitution rules is used
A key determines which particular rule is used for a given
transformation
Polyalphabetic cipher examples
Vignére cipher
Vernam Cipher
One-time pad
Vigenére Cipher
Using the key word PASWD encrypt the message: make it happen now
Steps
Determine the letter positions of the key word
P – 15
A–0
S – 18
W – 22
D–3
Using the keyword shift the letters of the plain text
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
Vigenére Cipher - Encryption
Enter the shift for the plaintext message
m a k e i t h a p p e n n o w
15 0 18 22 3 15 0 18 22 3 15 0 18 22 3
Cipher text will be as follows
m a k e i t h a p p e n n o w
B A C A L I H S L S T N F K Z
Vigenére Cipher - Decryption
Decrypt the following cipher text using the keyword PASWD
B A C A L I H S L S T N F K Z
Steps
BEach
A letter
C isA shifted
L inI theH opposite
S L direction
S T to get
N the
F plaintext
K Z
15 0 18 22 3 15 0 18 22 3 15 0 18 22 3
m a k e i t h a p p e n n o w
Once the keyword length is determined easy to break the cipher
Vigenère Autokey System
A keyword is concatenated with the plaintext itself to provide a running key
Since both share the same frequency distribution of letters statistical
techniques could be applied to break this
Vernam Cipher
Uses a keyword that is as long as the plaintext and has no statistical
relationship to it
Introduced by an AT&T engineer named Gilbert Vernam in 1918
System worked with binary numbers instead of letters
Cipher text is generated by performing the bitwise XOR of the plaintext
and key
Vernam proposed the use of a running loop of tape that eventually
repeated the key
Hence a long key was created but it was repeated
Although cryptanalysis is difficult it can still be broken
One-Time Pad - Features
Improvement to Vernam cipher proposed by an Army Signal Corp officer,
Joseph Mauborgne
Use a random key that is as long as the message so that the key need not
be repeated
Key is used to encrypt and decrypt a single message and then is discarded
Each new message requires a new key of the same length as the new
message
Scheme is unbreakable
Produces random output that bears no statistical relationship to the
plaintext
Because the ciphertext contains no information whatsoever about the
plaintext, there is simply no way to break the code
One-Time Pad - Difficulties
The one-time pad offers complete security but, in practice, has two
fundamental difficulties:
There is the practical problem of making large quantities of random
keys
Mammoth key distribution problem
For every message to be sent, a key of equal length is needed by
both sender and receiver
Because of these difficulties, the one-time pad is of limited utility
Useful primarily for low-bandwidth channels requiring very high security
The one-time pad is the only cryptosystem that exhibits perfect secrecy
Other Methods
Rotor Machines (Refer e-textbook)
Provides multiple stages of encryption as it consists of independently
rotating cylinders through which electric pulses flow
Has 26 input pins and 26 output pins with internal wiring that connects
each input pin to a unique output pin
For every complete rotation of the inner cylinder rotates one pin
position.
This is repeated for the outer cylinder when the middle cylinder rotates
Hence there is a possibility of 26 x 26 x 26 = 17,576 substitution
alphabets before the system repeats
Home Work: What is Steganography?
