The index of this series of articles can be found here.

Confidentiality, integrity and availability are the three basic components around which we should build and maintain our security model. Encryption is one of the tools we have available to achieve this and it can help us to make communications safer and ensure that only the sender and receiver can read clear text data.

Cryptography Concepts

Cryptography

Cryptography is the study of secure communications techniques that allow only the sender and intended recipient of a message to view its contents. The term is derived from the Greek word kryptos, which means hidden. It is closely associated with encryption, which is the act of scrambling ordinary text into what is known as ciphertext and then back again upon arrival. In addition, cryptography also covers the obfuscation of information in images using techniques such as microdots or merging. Ancient Egyptians were known to use these methods in complex hieroglyphics, and Roman Emperor Julius Caesar is credited with using one of the first modern cyphers.

The objective of cryptography is not only confidentiality, but it also includes integrity, authentication and non-repudiation.

Types of Cryptography

Symmetric Cryptography

Symmetric key algorithms are those which use a single set of keys for both encryption and decryption of data. This key is generally a shared secret between multiple parties who want to encrypt or decrypt the data.

Most widely used symmetric cyphers are AES and DES.

Asymmetric Cryptography / Public Key Cryptography

Asymmetric cryptography, also known as public-key cryptography, is a process that uses a pair of related keys, one public key and one private key, to encrypt and decrypt a message and protect it from unauthorized access or use. A public key is a cryptographic key that can be used by any person to encrypt a message so that it can only be deciphered by the intended recipient with their private key. A private key, also known as a secret key, is shared only with key’s initiator.

Many protocols rely on asymmetric cryptography, including the transport layer security (TLS) and secure sockets layer (SSL) protocols, which make HTTPS possible. The encryption process is also used in software programs such as browsers that need to establish a secure connection over an insecure network like the Internet or need to validate a digital signature.

RSA, DSA and Diffie-Hellman algorithm are popular examples of asynchronous cyphers.

Usually, private keys are known only by the owner and public keys are issued by using a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) where a trusted Certification Authority certifies the ownership of the key pairs.

Government Access to Keys

By the Government Access to Keys (GAK) schema, software companies will give copies of all keys to the government and the government promises that they will hold on to the keys in a secure way, and will only use them when a court issues a warrant to do so.

Encryption Algorithms

A cypher is a set of rules by which we implement encryption. Thousands of cyphers algorithms are available on the Internet. Some of them are proprietary while others are open source. Common methods by which cyphers replace original data with encrypted data are:

Substitution

The simple substitution cypher is a cypher that has been in use for many hundreds of years (an excellent history is given in Simon Singhs ‘the Code Book’). It basically consists of substituting every plaintext character for a different ciphertext character. It differs from the Caesar cypher in that the cypher alphabet is not simply the alphabet shifted, it is completely jumbled.

The simple substitution cypher offers very little communication security, and it will be shown that it can be easily broken even by hand, especially as the messages become longer (more than several hundred ciphertext characters).

Polyalphabetic

The development of Polyalphabetic Substitution Ciphers was the cryptographers answer to Frequency Analysis. The first known polyalphabetic cypher was the Alberti Cipher invented by Leon Battista Alberti in around 1467. He used a mixed alphabet to encrypt the plaintext, but at random points he would change to a different mixed alphabet, indicating the change with an uppercase letter in the ciphertext. In order to utilise this cypher, Alberti used a cypher disc to show how plaintext letters are related to ciphertext letters.

Stream Cypher

A stream cypher is an encryption algorithm that encrypts 1 bit or byte of plaintext at a time. It uses an infinite stream of pseudorandom bits as the key. For a stream cypher implementation to remain secure, its pseudorandom generator should be unpredictable and the key should never be reused. Stream cyphers are designed to approximate an idealized cypher, known as the One-Time Pad.

The One-Time Pad, which is supposed to employ a purely random key, can potentially achieve “perfect secrecy”. That is, it is supposed to be fully immune to brute force attacks. The problem with the one-time pad is that, in order to create such a cypher, its key should be as long or even longer than the plaintext.

Popular Stream Cyphers

• RC4: Rivest Cipher 4 (RC4) is the most widely used of all stream cyphers, particularly in software. It is also known as ARCFOUR or ARC4. RC4 stream cyphers have been used in various protocols like WEP and WPA (both security protocols for wireless networks) as well as in TLS. Unfortunately, recent studies have revealed vulnerabilities in RC4, prompting Mozilla and Microsoft to recommend that it be disabled where possible. In fact, RFC 7465 prohibits the use of RC4 in all versions of TLS. There are newer version RC5 and RC6.

Block Cipher

A block cypher is an encryption algorithm that encrypts a fixed size of n-bits of data, known as a block, at one time. The usual sizes of each block are 64 bits, 128 bits, and 256 bits. So for example, a 64-bit block cypher will take in 64 bits of plaintext and encrypt it into 64 bits of ciphertext. In cases where bits of plaintext is shorter than the block size, padding schemes are called into play. Majority of the symmetric cyphers used today are actually block cyphers. DES, Triple DES, AES, IDEA, and Blowfish are some of the commonly used encryption algorithms that fall under this group.

Popular Block Cyphers

• DES: Data Encryption Standard (DES) used to be the most popular block cypher in the world and was used in several industries. It is still popular today, but only because it is usually included in historical discussions of encryption algorithms. The DES algorithm became a standard in the US in 1977. However, it is already been proven to be vulnerable to brute force attacks and other cryptanalytic methods. DES is a 64-bit cypher that works with a 64-bit key. Actually, 8 of the 64 bits in the key are parity bits, so the key size is technically 56 bits long.
• 3DES: As its name implies, 3DES is a cypher based on DES. It is practically DES that is run three times. Each DES operation can use a different key, with each key being 56 bits long. Like DES, 3DES has a block size of 64 bits. Although 3DES is many times stronger than DES, it is also much slower (about 3x slower). Because many organizations found 3DES to be too slow for many applications, it never became the ultimate successor of DES.
• AES: A US Federal Government standard since 2002, AES or Advanced Encryption Standard is arguably the most widely used block cypher in the world. It has a block size of 128 bits and supports three possible key sizes: 128, 192, and 256 bits. The longer the key size, the stronger the encryption. However, longer keys also result in longer processes of encryption.
• Blowfish: This is another popular block cypher (although not as widely used as AES). It has a block size of 64 bits and supports a variable-length key that can range from 32 to 448 bits. One thing that makes blowfish so appealing is that Blowfish is unpatented and royalty-free.
• Twofish: This cypher is related to Blowfish but it is not as popular. It is a 128-bit block cypher that supports key sizes up to 256 bits long.

DSA and Related Signature Schemes

The DSA algorithm works in the framework of public-key cryptosystems and is based on the algebraic properties of modular exponentiation, together with the discrete logarithm problem, which is considered to be computationally intractable. The algorithm uses a key pair consisting of a public key and a private key. The private key is used to generate a digital signature for a message, and such a signature can be verified by using the signer’s corresponding public key. The digital signature provides message authentication (the receiver can verify the origin of the message), integrity (the receiver can verify that the message has not been modified since it was signed) and non-repudiation (the sender cannot falsely claim that they have not signed the message).

A digital certificate contains various items that are:

• Subject: Certificate’s holder name.
• Serial Number: Unique number to identify the certificate.
• Public key: A public copy of the public key of the certificate holder.
• Issuer: Certificate issuing authority’s digital signature to verify that the certificate is real.
• Signature algorithm: Algorithm used to digitally sign a certificate by the Certification Authority (CA).
• Validity: Validity of a certificate mark by expiration date and time.

RSA

RSA is an encryption algorithm, used to securely transmit messages over the internet. It is based on the principle that it is easy to multiply large numbers, but factoring large numbers is very difficult. For example, it is easy to check that 31 and 37 multiply to 1147, but trying to find the factors of 1147 is a much longer process.

RSA is an example of public-key cryptography, which is illustrated by the following example: Suppose Alice wishes to send Bob a valuable diamond, but the jewel will be stolen if sent unsecured. Both Alice and Bob have a variety of padlocks, but they don’t own the same ones, meaning that their keys cannot open the other’s locks.

In RSA, the public key is generated by multiplying two large prime numbers p and q together, and the private key is generated through a different process involving p and q. A user can then distribute his public key pq, and anyone wishing to send the user a message would encrypt their message using the public key. For all practical purposes, even computers cannot factor large numbers into the product of two primes, in the same way, that factoring a number like 414863 by hand is virtually impossible.

The implementation of RSA makes heavy use of modular arithmetic, Euler’s theorem, and Euler’s totient function. Notice that each step of the algorithm only involves multiplication, so it is easy for a computer to perform:

1. First, the receiver chooses two large prime numbers p and q. Their product, n = pq, will behalf of the public key.
2. The receiver calculates ϕ(pq) = (p−1)(q−1) and chooses a number e relatively prime to ϕ(pq). In practice, e is often chosen to be (2^16) + 1 = 65537, though it can be as small as 3 in some cases. e will be the other half of the public key.
3. The receiver calculates the modular inverse d of e modulo ϕ(n). In other words, de ≡ 1(modϕ(n)). d is the private key.
4. The receiver distributes both parts of the public key: n and e. d is kept secret.

Now that the public and private keys have been generated, they can be reused as often as wanted. To transmit a message, follow these steps:

1. First, the sender converts his message into a number m. One common conversion process uses the ASCII alphabet:
   1. For example, the message “HELLO” would be encoded as 7269767679. It is important that m<n, as otherwise the message will be lost when taken modulo n, so if n is smaller than the message, it will be sent in pieces.
2. The sender then calculates c ≡ m^e (mod n). c is the ciphertext or the encrypted message. Besides the public key, this is the only information an attacker will be able to steal.
3. The receiver computes c^d ≡ m(modn), thus retrieving the original number m.
4. The receiver translates m back into letters, retrieving the original message.

Note that step 3 makes use of Euler’s theorem.

Message Digest (One-Way Hash) Functions

A message digest is a cryptographic hash function containing a string of digits created by a one-way hashing formula.

Message digests are designed to protect the integrity of a piece of data or media to detect changes and alterations to any part of a message. They are a type of cryptography utilizing hash values that can warn the copyright owner of any modifications applied to their work.

Message digest hash numbers represent specific files containing the protected works. One message digest is assigned to particular data content. It can reference a change made deliberately or accidentally, but it prompts the owner to identify the modification as well as the individual(s) making the change. Message digests are algorithmic numbers.

This term is also known as a hash value and sometimes as a checksum.

The message digest is a unique fixed-size bit string that is calculated in a way that if a single bit is modified, it will change fifty per cent of the message digest value.

Message Digest Function (MD5)

The MD5 function is a cryptographic algorithm that takes an input of arbitrary length and produces a message digest that is 128 bits long. The digest is sometimes also called the “hash” or “fingerprint” of the input. MD5 is used in many situations where a potentially long message needs to be processed and/or compared quickly. The most common application is the creation and verification of digital signatures.

MD5 was designed by well-known cryptographer Ronald Rivest in 1991. In 2004, some serious flaws were found in MD5. The complete implications of these flaws have yet to be determined.

Secure Hashing Algorithm (SHA)

Secure Hash Algorithms (SHA) are a family of cryptographic functions designed to keep data secured. It works by transforming the data using a hash function: an algorithm that consists of bitwise operations, modular additions, and compression functions. The hash function then produces a fixed-size string that looks nothing like the original. These algorithms are designed to be one-way functions, meaning that once they are transformed into their respective hash values, it is virtually impossible to transform them back into the original data. A few algorithms of interest are SHA-1, SHA-2, and SHA-3, each of which was successively designed with increasingly stronger encryption in response to hacker attacks. SHA-0, for instance, is now obsolete due to the widely exposed vulnerabilities.

SHA-1 produces 160-bits hashing values. SHA-2 is a group of different hashing including SHA-256, SHA-384 and SHA-512

Hashed Message Authentication Code (HMAC)

A hashed message authentication code (HMAC) is a message authentication code that makes use of a cryptographic key along with a hash function. The actual algorithm behind a hashed message authentication code is complicated, with hashing being performed twice. This helps in resisting some forms of cryptographic analysis. A hashed message authentication code is considered to be more secure than other similar message authentication codes, as the data transmitted and key used in the process are hashed separately.

Secure Shell (SSH)

Secure Shell (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. Typical applications include remote command-line, login, and remote command execution, but any network service can be secured with SSH.

SSH provides a secure channel over an unsecured network by using client-server architecture, connecting an SSH client application with an SSH server. The protocol specification distinguishes between two major versions, referred to as SSH-1 and SSH-2. The standard TCP port for SSH is 22.

Secure shell protocol consist of three major components:

• The Transport Layer Protocol (SSH-TRANS) provides server authentication, confidentiality and integrity. It may optionally also provide compression. The transport layer will typically run over a TCP/IP connection, but might also run of any other reliable data stream.
• The User Authentication Protocol (SSH-USERAUTH) authenticates the client-side user to the server. It runs over the transport layer protocol.
• The Connection Protocol (SSH-CONNECT) multiplexes the encrypted tunnel into several logical channels. It runs over the user authentication protocol.

Public Key Infrastructure

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is a combination of policies, procedures, hardware, software and people that are required to create, manage and revoke digital certificates.

Public and Private Key Pair

Public and private keys work as a pair to enforce the encryption and decryption process. The public key can be provided to anyone and the private key must be kept it secret.

Both encryption/decryptions are valid, using the public key to encrypt and the private key to decrypt or the opposite, where the private key is used for encryption and the public key for decryption. Both ways have different applications.

Certification Authorities

Certification Authorities (CA) is a computer or entity that creates and issues digital certificates. Information like IP address, fully qualified domain name and the public key are present on these certificates. CAs also assign serial numbers to the digital certificates and sign the certificate with its digital signature.

Root Certificate

Root certificates provide the public key and other details of CAs. Different OS store root certificates in different ways.

Identity Certificate

The purpose of identity certificates is similar to root certificates but they cover client computers or devices. For example, a router or a web server that want to make SSL connections with other peers.

Signed Certificate Vs. Self-Signed Certificate

A self-signed certificate is a public key certificate that is signed and validated by the same person. It means that the certificate is signed with its own private key and is not relevant to the organization or person identity that does sign process.

A signed certificate is supported by a reputable third-party certificate authority (CA). The issue of a signed certificate requires verification of domain ownership, legal business documents, and other essential technical perspectives. To establish a certificate chain, certificate authority also itself issues a certificate a root certificate.

Email Encryption

Digital Signature

The digital signature is used to validate the authenticity of digital documents. Digital signatures ensure the author of the document, the date and time of signing and authenticate the content of the message.

There are two categories of digital signatures:

• Direct digital signature: The Direct Digital Signature is only include two parties one to send a message and another one to receive it. According to direct digital signature both parties trust each other and knows there public key. The message are prone to get corrupted and the sender can declines about the message sent by him any time.
• Arbitrated Digital Signature: The Arbitrated Digital Signature includes three parties in which one is the sender, second is the receiver and the third is the arbiter who will become the medium for sending and receiving the message between them. The message are less prone to get corrupted because of timestamp being included by default.

Secure Sockets Layer

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a server and a client—typically a web server (website) and a browser, or a mail server and a mail client (e.g., Outlook).

SSL allows sensitive information such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, and login credentials to be transmitted securely. Normally, data sent between browsers and web servers is sent in plain text – leaving you vulnerable to eavesdropping. If an attacker is able to intercept all data being sent between a browser and a web server, they can see and use that information.

More specifically, SSL is a security protocol. Protocols describe how algorithms should be used. In this case, the SSL protocol determines variables of the encryption for both the link and the data being transmitted.

All browsers have the capability to interact with secured web servers using the SSL protocol. However, the browser and the server need what is called an SSL Certificate to be able to establish a secure connection.

SSL and TLS for Secure Communication

A popular implementation of public-key encryption is the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). Originally developed by Netscape, SSL is an Internet security protocol used by Internet browsers and Web servers to transmit sensitive information. SSL has become part of an overall security protocol known as Transport Layer Security (TLS).

TLS and its predecessor SSL make significant use of certificate authorities. Once your browser requests a secure page and adds the “s” onto “http“, the browser sends out the public key and the certificate, checking three things:

1. The certificate comes from a trusted party.
2. The certificate is currently valid.
3. The certificate has a relationship with the site from which it is coming.

The following are some important functionalities SSL/TLS has been designed for:

• Server authentication to client and vice versa.
• Select a common cryptographic algorithm.
• Generate shared secrets between peers.
• Protection of normal TCP/UDP connection.

How SSL/TLS works

These are the essential principles to grasp for understanding how SSL/TLS works:

• Secure communication begins with a TLS handshake, in which the two communicating parties open a secure connection and exchange the public key.
• During the TLS handshake, the two parties generate session keys, and the session keys encrypt and decrypt all communications after the TLS handshake.
• Different session keys are used to encrypt communications in each new session.
• TLS ensures that the party on the server-side, or the website the user is interacting with, is actually who they claim to be.
• TLS also ensures that data has not been altered, since a message authentication code (MAC) is included with transmissions.

With TLS, both HTTP data that users send to a website (by clicking, filling out forms, etc.) and the HTTP data that websites send to users is encrypted. Encrypted data has to be decrypted by the recipient using a key.

TLS handshake

TLS communication sessions begin with a TLS handshake. A TLS handshake uses something called asymmetric encryption, meaning that two different keys are used on the two ends of the conversation. This is possible because of a technique called public-key cryptography.

In public-key cryptography, two keys are used: a public key, which the server makes available publicly, and a private key, which is kept secret and only used on the server-side. Data encrypted with the public key can only be decrypted with the private key and vice versa.

During the TLS handshake, the client and server use the public and private keys to exchange randomly generated data, and this random data is used to create new keys for encryption, called the session keys.

Pretty Good Privacy

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a type of encryption program for online communication channels. The method was introduced in 1991 by Phil Zimmerman, a computer scientist and cryptographer. PGP offers authentication and privacy protection in files, emails, disk partitions and digital signatures and has been dubbed as the closest thing to military-grade encryption. PGP encrypts the contents of e-mail messages using a combination of different methods. PGP uses hashing, data compression, symmetric encryption, and asymmetric encryption. In addition to e-mail encryption, PGP also supports the use of a digital signature to verify the sender of an e-mail.

OpenPGP is the most widely applied standard when it comes to modern PGP practices. OpenPGP programs allow users to encrypt private and confidential messages before uploading or downloading content from a remote server. This prevents cybersecurity threats from the open channels of the Internet.

Disk Encryption

The disk encryption covers the encryption of disk to secure files and directories by converting them into an encrypted format. Disk encryption encrypts every bit on a disk to prevent unauthorised access to data storage.

The standard process for booting up an operating system is that the first section of the disk, called the master boot record, instructs the system where to read the first file that begins the instructions for loading the operating system.

When disk encryption is installed, the contents of the disk, except the master boot record and a small system that it loads, are encrypted using any suitable modern symmetric cypher by a secret key. The master boot record is modified to first load this small system, which can validate authentication information from the user.

Cryptography Attacks

Cryptographic attacks aim to recover the recover encryption keys. The process of finding vulnerabilities in code, encryption algorithms or key management schemes is called Cryptanalysis.

There are different attacks that can be applied in order to recover an encryption key:

• Known-plaintext attacks: They are applied when cryptoanalyst have access to the plaintext message and its corresponding ciphertext and seeks to discover a correlation between them.
• Cyphertext-only attacks: Cryptoanalysts only have access to the cyphertexts and they try to extract the plain text or the key by analysing the text and trying to extract the plain text. Frequency analysis, for example, is a great tool for this.
• Chosen-plaintext attacks: A chosen-plaintext attack (CPA) is a model for cryptanalysis which assumes that the attacker can choose random plaintexts to be encrypted and obtain the corresponding ciphertexts. The goal of the attack is to gain some further information which reduces the security of the encryption scheme. In the worst case, a chosen-plaintext attack could expose secret information after calculating the secret key. Two forms of chosen-plaintext attack can be distinguished:
  • Batch chosen-plaintext attack, where the cryptanalyst chooses all plaintexts before any of them are encrypted. This is an unprofessional use of “chosen-plaintext attack”.
  • Adaptive chosen-plaintext attack, where the professional cryptanalyst makes a series of interactive queries, choosing subsequent plaintexts based on the information from the previous encryptions.
• Chosen-cypher text attacks: A cryptanalyst can analyse any chosen ciphertexts together with their corresponding plaintexts. His goal is to acquire a secret key or to get as many information about the attacked system as possible.
• Adaptive-chosen-ciphertext attacks: The adaptive-chosen-ciphertext attack is a kind of chosen-ciphertext attacks, during which an attacker can make the attacked system decrypt many different ciphertexts. This means that the new ciphertexts are created based on responses (plaintexts) received previously. The attacker can request decrypting of many ciphertexts.
• Adaptive-chosen-plaintext attacks: An adaptive-chosen-plaintext attack is a chosen-plaintext attack scenario in which the attacker has the ability to make his or her choice of the inputs to the encryption function based on the previous chosen-plaintext queries and their corresponding ciphertexts.
• Rubber hose attacks: The rubber hose attack is extracting secrets from people by use of torture or coercion. Other means is governmental and corporate influence over other sub-entities.

Code Breaking Methodologies

Some examples of methodologies that can help to break encryptions are:

• Brute force
• One-time pad
• Frequency analysis