Cryptanalysis (from the Greek kryptós , "hidden", and analýein , "to analyze") refers to the process of analyzing information systems in order to understand hidden aspects of the systems. Cryptanalysis is used to breach cryptographic security systems and gain access to the contents of encrypted messages, even if the cryptographic key is unknown.
110-464: In addition to mathematical analysis of cryptographic algorithms, cryptanalysis includes the study of side-channel attacks that do not target weaknesses in the cryptographic algorithms themselves, but instead exploit weaknesses in their implementation. Even though the goal has been the same, the methods and techniques of cryptanalysis have changed drastically through the history of cryptography, adapting to increasing cryptographic complexity, ranging from
220-457: A key stream for the emulation of a synchronous stream cipher . The newer counter (CTR) mode similarly creates a key stream, but has the advantage of only needing unique and not (pseudo-)random values as initialization vectors; the needed randomness is derived internally by using the initialization vector as a block counter and encrypting this counter for each block. From a security-theoretic point of view, modes of operation must provide what
330-413: A round . Usually, the round function R takes different round keys K i as a second input, which is derived from the original key: where M 0 {\displaystyle M_{0}} is the plaintext and M r {\displaystyle M_{r}} the ciphertext, with r being the number of rounds. Frequently, key whitening is used in addition to this. At
440-475: A simple substitution cipher (where each letter is simply replaced with another), the most frequent letter in the ciphertext would be a likely candidate for "E". Frequency analysis of such a cipher is therefore relatively easy, provided that the ciphertext is long enough to give a reasonably representative count of the letters of the alphabet that it contains. Al-Kindi's invention of the frequency analysis technique for breaking monoalphabetic substitution ciphers
550-550: A substitution box implemented as a lookup table as in Data Encryption Standard and Advanced Encryption Standard , a permutation box , and multiplication as in IDEA . A block cipher by itself allows encryption only of a single data block of the cipher's block length. For a variable-length message, the data must first be partitioned into separate cipher blocks. In the simplest case, known as electronic codebook (ECB) mode,
660-622: A 9th-century Arab polymath , in Risalah fi Istikhraj al-Mu'amma ( A Manuscript on Deciphering Cryptographic Messages ). This treatise contains the first description of the method of frequency analysis . Al-Kindi is thus regarded as the first codebreaker in history. His breakthrough work was influenced by Al-Khalil (717–786), who wrote the Book of Cryptographic Messages , which contains the first use of permutations and combinations to list all possible Arabic words with and without vowels. Frequency analysis
770-402: A block cipher must be secure, in addition to being robust against brute-force attacks . Most block cipher algorithms are classified as iterated block ciphers which means that they transform fixed-size blocks of plaintext into identically sized blocks of ciphertext , via the repeated application of an invertible transformation known as the round function , with each iteration referred to as
880-542: A block size. There is a trade-off though as large block sizes can result in the algorithm becoming inefficient to operate. Earlier block ciphers such as the DES have typically selected a 64-bit block size, while newer designs such as the AES support block sizes of 128 bits or more, with some ciphers supporting a range of different block sizes. A linear cryptanalysis is a form of cryptanalysis based on finding affine approximations to
990-671: A breakthrough in factoring would impact the security of RSA. In 1980, one could factor a difficult 50-digit number at an expense of 10 elementary computer operations. By 1984 the state of the art in factoring algorithms had advanced to a point where a 75-digit number could be factored in 10 operations. Advances in computing technology also meant that the operations could be performed much faster. Moore's law predicts that computer speeds will continue to increase. Factoring techniques may continue to do so as well, but will most likely depend on mathematical insight and creativity, neither of which has ever been successfully predictable. 150-digit numbers of
1100-519: A cipher simply means finding a weakness in the cipher that can be exploited with a complexity less than brute force. Never mind that brute-force might require 2 encryptions; an attack requiring 2 encryptions would be considered a break...simply put, a break can just be a certificational weakness: evidence that the cipher does not perform as advertised." The results of cryptanalysis can also vary in usefulness. Cryptographer Lars Knudsen (1998) classified various types of attack on block ciphers according to
1210-404: A ciphertext ( R n + 1 , L n + 1 ) {\displaystyle (R_{n+1},L_{n+1})} is accomplished by computing for i = n , n − 1 , … , 0 {\displaystyle i=n,n-1,\ldots ,0} Then ( L 0 , R 0 ) {\displaystyle (L_{0},R_{0})}
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#17330859049851320-448: A constant execution path prevents such operation-dependent power differences (differences in power from choosing one branch over another) from leaking any secret information. On architectures where the instruction execution time is not data-dependent, a PC-secure program is also immune to timing attacks. Another way in which code can be non-isochronous is that modern CPUs have a memory cache: accessing infrequently used information incurs
1430-408: A cryptosystem by deceiving or coercing people with legitimate access are not typically considered side-channel attacks: see social engineering and rubber-hose cryptanalysis . General classes of side-channel attack include: In all cases, the underlying principle is that physical effects caused by the operation of a cryptosystem ( on the side ) can provide useful extra information about secrets in
1540-482: A fixed XOR difference, integral cryptanalysis uses sets or even multisets of chosen plaintexts of which part is held constant and another part varies through all possibilities. For example, an attack might use 256 chosen plaintexts that have all but 8 of their bits the same, but all differ in those 8 bits. Such a set necessarily has an XOR sum of 0, and the XOR sums of the corresponding sets of ciphertexts provide information about
1650-404: A good block cipher is designed to avoid side-channel attacks, such as branch prediction and input-dependent memory accesses that might leak secret data via the cache state or the execution time. In addition, the cipher should be concise, for small hardware and software implementations. One important type of iterated block cipher known as a substitution–permutation network (SPN) takes a block of
1760-499: A large problem.) When a recovered plaintext is then combined with its ciphertext, the key is revealed: Knowledge of a key then allows the analyst to read other messages encrypted with the same key, and knowledge of a set of related keys may allow cryptanalysts to diagnose the system used for constructing them. Governments have long recognized the potential benefits of cryptanalysis for intelligence , both military and diplomatic, and established dedicated organizations devoted to breaking
1870-407: A large timing penalty, revealing some information about the frequency of use of memory blocks. Cryptographic code designed to resist cache attacks attempts to use memory in only a predictable fashion (like accessing only the input, outputs and program data, and doing so according to a fixed pattern). For example, data-dependent table lookups must be avoided because the cache could reveal which part of
1980-411: A mature field." However, any postmortems for cryptanalysis may be premature. While the effectiveness of cryptanalytic methods employed by intelligence agencies remains unknown, many serious attacks against both academic and practical cryptographic primitives have been published in the modern era of computer cryptography: Thus, while the best modern ciphers may be far more resistant to cryptanalysis than
2090-443: A means of effectively improving security by combining simple operations such as substitutions and permutations . Iterated product ciphers carry out encryption in multiple rounds , each of which uses a different subkey derived from the original key. One widespread implementation of such ciphers named a Feistel network after Horst Feistel is notably implemented in the DES cipher. Many other realizations of block ciphers, such as
2200-679: A message is first split into separate blocks of the cipher's block size (possibly extending the last block with padding bits), and then each block is encrypted and decrypted independently. However, such a naive method is generally insecure because equal plaintext blocks will always generate equal ciphertext blocks (for the same key), so patterns in the plaintext message become evident in the ciphertext output. To overcome this limitation, several so-called block cipher modes of operation have been designed and specified in national recommendations such as NIST 800-38A and BSI TR-02102 and international standards such as ISO/IEC 10116 . The general concept
2310-419: A plaintext value P , such that For example, a block cipher encryption algorithm might take a 128-bit block of plaintext as input, and output a corresponding 128-bit block of ciphertext. The exact transformation is controlled using a second input – the secret key. Decryption is similar: the decryption algorithm takes, in this example, a 128-bit block of ciphertext together with the secret key, and yields
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#17330859049852420-545: A program. With reciprocal machine ciphers such as the Lorenz cipher and the Enigma machine used by Nazi Germany during World War II , each message had its own key. Usually, the transmitting operator informed the receiving operator of this message key by transmitting some plaintext and/or ciphertext before the enciphered message. This is termed the indicator , as it indicates to the receiving operator how to set his machine to decipher
2530-401: A quantum computer, brute-force key search can be made quadratically faster. However, this could be countered by doubling the key length. Side-channel attacks In computer security , a side-channel attack is any attack based on extra information that can be gathered because of the fundamental way a computer protocol or algorithm is implemented , rather than flaws in the design of
2640-473: A reduced-round block cipher, as a step towards breaking the full system. Cryptanalysis has coevolved together with cryptography, and the contest can be traced through the history of cryptography —new ciphers being designed to replace old broken designs, and new cryptanalytic techniques invented to crack the improved schemes. In practice, they are viewed as two sides of the same coin: secure cryptography requires design against possible cryptanalysis. Although
2750-492: A set of messages. For example, the Vernam cipher enciphers by bit-for-bit combining plaintext with a long key using the " exclusive or " operator, which is also known as " modulo-2 addition " (symbolized by ⊕ ): Deciphering combines the same key bits with the ciphertext to reconstruct the plaintext: (In modulo-2 arithmetic, addition is the same as subtraction.) When two such ciphertexts are aligned in depth, combining them eliminates
2860-394: A sharing of it: a set of variables (called "shares") y 1 , . . . , y d {\displaystyle y_{1},...,y_{d}} such that y = y 1 ⊕ . . . ⊕ y d {\displaystyle y=y_{1}\oplus ...\oplus y_{d}} (where ⊕ {\displaystyle \oplus }
2970-410: A side channel and the secret data, countermeasures fall into two main categories: (1) eliminate or reduce the release of such information and (2) eliminate the relationship between the leaked information and the secret data, that is, make the leaked information unrelated, or rather uncorrelated , to the secret data, typically through some form of randomization of the ciphertext that transforms the data in
3080-420: A similar assessment about Ultra, saying that it shortened the war "by not less than two years and probably by four years"; moreover, he said that in the absence of Ultra, it is uncertain how the war would have ended. In practice, frequency analysis relies as much on linguistic knowledge as it does on statistics, but as ciphers became more complex, mathematics became more important in cryptanalysis. This change
3190-427: A small block of input bits with another block of output bits. This substitution must be one-to-one , to ensure invertibility (hence decryption). A secure S-box will have the property that changing one input bit will change about half of the output bits on average, exhibiting what is known as the avalanche effect —i.e. it has the property that each output bit will depend on every input bit. A permutation box (P-box)
3300-496: A way that can be undone after the cryptographic operation (e.g., decryption) is completed. Under the first category, displays with special shielding to lessen electromagnetic emissions, reducing susceptibility to TEMPEST attacks, are now commercially available. Power line conditioning and filtering can help deter power-monitoring attacks, although such measures must be used cautiously, since even very small correlations can remain and compromise security. Physical enclosures can reduce
3410-451: Is a permutation of all the bits: it takes the outputs of all the S-boxes of one round, permutes the bits, and feeds them into the S-boxes of the next round. A good P-box has the property that the output bits of any S-box are distributed to as many S-box inputs as possible. At each round, the round key (obtained from the key with some simple operations, for instance, using S-boxes and P-boxes)
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3520-479: Is able to recover the secret key depending on the accesses made (or not made) by the victim, deducing the encryption key. Also, unlike some of the other side-channel attacks, this method does not create a fault in the ongoing cryptographic operation and is invisible to the victim. In 2017, two CPU vulnerabilities (dubbed Meltdown and Spectre ) were discovered, which can use a cache-based side channel to allow an attacker to leak memory contents of other processes and
3630-912: Is accomplished by computing for i = n , n − 1 , … , 0 {\displaystyle i=n,n-1,\ldots ,0} where T i = F ( L i + 1 ′ − R i + 1 ′ , K i ) {\displaystyle T_{i}=\mathrm {F} (L_{i+1}'-R_{i+1}',K_{i})} and ( L n + 1 ′ , R n + 1 ′ ) = H − 1 ( L n + 1 , R n + 1 ) {\displaystyle (L_{n+1}',R_{n+1}')=\mathrm {H} ^{-1}(L_{n+1},R_{n+1})} Then ( L 0 , R 0 ) = ( L 0 ′ , R 0 ′ ) {\displaystyle (L_{0},R_{0})=(L_{0}',R_{0}')}
3740-406: Is combined using some group operation, typically XOR . Decryption is done by simply reversing the process (using the inverses of the S-boxes and P-boxes and applying the round keys in reversed order). In a Feistel cipher , the block of plain text to be encrypted is split into two equal-sized halves. The round function is applied to one half, using a subkey, and then the output is XORed with
3850-468: Is for a third party, a cryptanalyst , to gain as much information as possible about the original ( " plaintext " ), attempting to "break" the encryption to read the ciphertext and learning the secret key so future messages can be decrypted and read. A mathematical technique to do this is called a cryptographic attack . Cryptographic attacks can be characterized in a number of ways: Cryptanalytical attacks can be classified based on what type of information
3960-495: Is known as semantic security . Informally, it means that given some ciphertext under an unknown key one cannot practically derive any information from the ciphertext (other than the length of the message) over what one would have known without seeing the ciphertext. It has been shown that all of the modes discussed above, with the exception of the ECB mode, provide this property under so-called chosen plaintext attacks . Some modes such as
4070-519: Is that it also splits the input block into two equal pieces. However, the round function is applied to the difference between the two, and the result is then added to both half blocks. Let F {\displaystyle \mathrm {F} } be the round function and H {\displaystyle \mathrm {H} } a half-round function and let K 0 , K 1 , … , K n {\displaystyle K_{0},K_{1},\ldots ,K_{n}} be
4180-439: Is that, unlike attacks on symmetric cryptosystems, any cryptanalysis has the opportunity to make use of knowledge gained from the public key . Quantum computers , which are still in the early phases of research, have potential use in cryptanalysis. For example, Shor's Algorithm could factor large numbers in polynomial time , in effect breaking some commonly used forms of public-key encryption. By using Grover's algorithm on
4290-445: Is the XOR operation). An attacker must recover all the values of the shares to get any meaningful information. Recently, white-box modeling was utilized to develop a low-overhead generic circuit-level countermeasure against both EM as well as power side-channel attacks. To minimize the effects of the higher-level metal layers in an IC acting as more efficient antennas, the idea is to embed
4400-509: Is the basic tool for breaking most classical ciphers . In natural languages, certain letters of the alphabet appear more often than others; in English , " E " is likely to be the most common letter in any sample of plaintext . Similarly, the digraph "TH" is the most likely pair of letters in English, and so on. Frequency analysis relies on a cipher failing to hide these statistics . For example, in
4510-855: Is the plaintext again. Many modern block ciphers and hashes are ARX algorithms—their round function involves only three operations: (A) modular addition, (R) rotation with fixed rotation amounts, and (X) XOR . Examples include ChaCha20 , Speck , XXTEA , and BLAKE . Many authors draw an ARX network, a kind of data flow diagram , to illustrate such a round function. These ARX operations are popular because they are relatively fast and cheap in hardware and software, their implementation can be made extremely simple, and also because they run in constant time, and therefore are immune to timing attacks . The rotational cryptanalysis technique attempts to attack such round functions. Other operations often used in block ciphers include data-dependent rotations as in RC5 and RC6 ,
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4620-591: Is the plaintext again. One advantage of the Feistel model compared to a substitution–permutation network is that the round function F {\displaystyle {\rm {F}}} does not have to be invertible. The Lai–Massey scheme offers security properties similar to those of the Feistel structure . It also shares the advantage that the round function F {\displaystyle \mathrm {F} } does not have to be invertible. Another similarity
4730-453: Is to design the software so that it is "PC-secure" in the "program counter security model". In a PC-secure program, the execution path does not depend on secret values. In other words, all conditional branches depend only on public information. (This is a more restrictive condition than isochronous code, but a less restrictive condition than branch-free code.) Even though multiply operations draw more power than NOP on practically all CPUs, using
4840-413: Is to design the software to be isochronous, that is to run in an exactly constant amount of time, independently of secret values. This makes timing attacks impossible. Such countermeasures can be difficult to implement in practice, since even individual instructions can have variable timing on some CPUs. One partial countermeasure against simple power attacks, but not differential power-analysis attacks,
4950-419: Is to use randomization of the plaintext data based on an additional input value, frequently called an initialization vector , to create what is termed probabilistic encryption . In the popular cipher block chaining (CBC) mode, for encryption to be secure the initialization vector passed along with the plaintext message must be a random or pseudo-random value, which is added in an exclusive-or manner to
5060-474: Is weakened. For example, the security of the Diffie–Hellman key exchange scheme depends on the difficulty of calculating the discrete logarithm . In 1983, Don Coppersmith found a faster way to find discrete logarithms (in certain groups), and thereby requiring cryptographers to use larger groups (or different types of groups). RSA 's security depends (in part) upon the difficulty of integer factorization –
5170-421: The " plaintext " ) is sent securely to a recipient by the sender first converting it into an unreadable form ( " ciphertext " ) using an encryption algorithm . The ciphertext is sent through an insecure channel to the recipient. The recipient decrypts the ciphertext by applying an inverse decryption algorithm , recovering the plaintext. To decrypt the ciphertext, the recipient requires a secret knowledge from
5280-711: The AES , are classified as substitution–permutation networks . The root of all cryptographic block formats used within the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standards lies with the Atalla Key Block (AKB), which was a key innovation of the Atalla Box , the first hardware security module (HSM). It was developed in 1972 by Mohamed M. Atalla , founder of Atalla Corporation (now Utimaco Atalla ), and released in 1973. The AKB
5390-415: The Enigma , cryptanalysis and the broader field of information security remain quite active. Asymmetric cryptography (or public-key cryptography ) is cryptography that relies on using two (mathematically related) keys; one private, and one public. Such ciphers invariably rely on "hard" mathematical problems as the basis of their security, so an obvious point of attack is to develop methods for solving
5500-537: The Vigenère cipher , which uses a repeating key to select different encryption alphabets in rotation, was considered to be completely secure ( le chiffre indéchiffrable —"the indecipherable cipher"). Nevertheless, Charles Babbage (1791–1871) and later, independently, Friedrich Kasiski (1805–81) succeeded in breaking this cipher. During World War I , inventors in several countries developed rotor cipher machines such as Arthur Scherbius ' Enigma , in an attempt to minimise
5610-426: The key size ), and a bit string P , of length n (called the block size ), and returns a string C of n bits. P is called the plaintext , and C is termed the ciphertext . For each K , the function E K ( P ) is required to be an invertible mapping on {0,1} . The inverse for E is defined as a function taking a key K and a ciphertext C to return
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#17330859049855720-446: The CBC mode only operate on complete plaintext blocks. Simply extending the last block of a message with zero bits is insufficient since it does not allow a receiver to easily distinguish messages that differ only in the number of padding bits. More importantly, such a simple solution gives rise to very efficient padding oracle attacks . A suitable padding scheme is therefore needed to extend
5830-718: The German Lorenz cipher and the Japanese Purple code , and a variety of classical schemes): Attacks can also be characterised by the resources they require. Those resources include: It is sometimes difficult to predict these quantities precisely, especially when the attack is not practical to actually implement for testing. But academic cryptanalysts tend to provide at least the estimated order of magnitude of their attacks' difficulty, saying, for example, "SHA-1 collisions now 2." Bruce Schneier notes that even computationally impractical attacks can be considered breaks: "Breaking
5940-502: The United States National Bureau of Standards (subsequently the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology , NIST) in 1977 was fundamental in the public understanding of modern block cipher design. It also influenced the academic development of cryptanalytic attacks . Both differential and linear cryptanalysis arose out of studies on DES design. As of 2016 , there is a palette of attack techniques against which
6050-561: The action of a cipher . Linear cryptanalysis is one of the two most widely used attacks on block ciphers; the other being differential cryptanalysis . The discovery is attributed to Mitsuru Matsui , who first applied the technique to the FEAL cipher (Matsui and Yamagishi, 1992). Integral cryptanalysis is a cryptanalytic attack that is particularly applicable to block ciphers based on substitution–permutation networks. Unlike differential cryptanalysis, which uses pairs of chosen plaintexts with
6160-532: The actual word " cryptanalysis " is relatively recent (it was coined by William Friedman in 1920), methods for breaking codes and ciphers are much older. David Kahn notes in The Codebreakers that Arab scholars were the first people to systematically document cryptanalytic methods. The first known recorded explanation of cryptanalysis was given by Al-Kindi (c. 801–873, also known as "Alkindus" in Europe),
6270-475: The amount and quality of secret information that was discovered: Academic attacks are often against weakened versions of a cryptosystem, such as a block cipher or hash function with some rounds removed. Many, but not all, attacks become exponentially more difficult to execute as rounds are added to a cryptosystem, so it's possible for the full cryptosystem to be strong even though reduced-round variants are weak. Nonetheless, partial breaks that come close to breaking
6380-505: The analysis). When the amount of noise in the side channel increases, the adversary needs to collect more measurements. Another countermeasure under the first category is to use security analysis software to identify certain classes of side-channel attacks that can be found during the design stages of the underlying hardware itself. Timing attacks and cache attacks are both identifiable through certain commercially available security analysis software platforms, which allow for testing to identify
6490-530: The attack vulnerability itself, as well as the effectiveness of the architectural change to circumvent the vulnerability. The most comprehensive method to employ this countermeasure is to create a Secure Development Lifecycle for hardware, which includes utilizing all available security analysis platforms at their respective stages of the hardware development lifecycle. In the case of timing attacks against targets whose computation times are quantized into discrete clock cycle counts, an effective countermeasure against
6600-459: The attacker , blinding is an effective countermeasure, since the actual operation is executed on a randomized version of the data, over which the attacker has no control or even knowledge. A more general countermeasure (in that it is effective against all side-channel attacks) is the masking countermeasure. The principle of masking is to avoid manipulating any sensitive value y {\displaystyle y} directly, but rather manipulate
6710-551: The attacker has available. As a basic starting point it is normally assumed that, for the purposes of analysis, the general algorithm is known; this is Shannon's Maxim "the enemy knows the system" – in its turn, equivalent to Kerckhoffs's principle . This is a reasonable assumption in practice – throughout history, there are countless examples of secret algorithms falling into wider knowledge, variously through espionage , betrayal and reverse engineering . (And on occasion, ciphers have been broken through pure deduction; for example,
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#17330859049856820-411: The attacker may need to choose particular plaintexts to be encrypted or even to ask for plaintexts to be encrypted using several keys related to the secret key . Furthermore, it might only reveal a small amount of information, enough to prove the cryptosystem imperfect but too little to be useful to real-world attackers. Finally, an attack might only apply to a weakened version of cryptographic tools, like
6930-444: The balancing is perfect. This "balanced design" can be approximated in software by manipulating both the data and its complement together. Several "secure CPUs" have been built as asynchronous CPUs ; they have no global timing reference. While these CPUs were intended to make timing and power attacks more difficult, subsequent research found that timing variations in asynchronous circuits are harder to remove. A typical example of
7040-522: The basic operation is as follows: Split the plaintext block into two equal pieces, ( L 0 {\displaystyle L_{0}} , R 0 {\displaystyle R_{0}} ) For each round i = 0 , 1 , … , n {\displaystyle i=0,1,\dots ,n} , compute Then the ciphertext is ( R n + 1 , L n + 1 ) {\displaystyle (R_{n+1},L_{n+1})} . The decryption of
7150-423: The beginning and the end, the data is modified with key material (often with XOR ): Given one of the standard iterated block cipher design schemes, it is fairly easy to construct a block cipher that is cryptographically secure, simply by using a large number of rounds. However, this will make the cipher inefficient. Thus, efficiency is the most important additional design criterion for professional ciphers. Further,
7260-405: The characteristics of those signals could determine which key was pressed. Power consumption of devices causes heating, which is offset by cooling effects. Temperature changes create thermally induced mechanical stress. This stress can create low level acoustic emissions from operating CPUs (about 10 kHz in some cases). Recent research by Shamir et al. has suggested that information about
7370-441: The cipher machine. Sending two or more messages with the same key is an insecure process. To a cryptanalyst the messages are then said to be "in depth." This may be detected by the messages having the same indicator by which the sending operator informs the receiving operator about the key generator initial settings for the message. Generally, the cryptanalyst may benefit from lining up identical enciphering operations among
7480-419: The ciphertext is ( L n + 1 , R n + 1 ) = ( L n + 1 ′ , R n + 1 ′ ) {\displaystyle (L_{n+1},R_{n+1})=(L_{n+1}',R_{n+1}')} . The decryption of a ciphertext ( L n + 1 , R n + 1 ) {\displaystyle (L_{n+1},R_{n+1})}
7590-546: The codes and ciphers of other nations, for example, GCHQ and the NSA , organizations which are still very active today. Even though computation was used to great effect in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher and other systems during World War II, it also made possible new methods of cryptography orders of magnitude more complex than ever before. Taken as a whole, modern cryptography has become much more impervious to cryptanalysis than
7700-449: The common key, leaving just a combination of the two plaintexts: The individual plaintexts can then be worked out linguistically by trying probable words (or phrases), also known as "cribs," at various locations; a correct guess, when combined with the merged plaintext stream, produces intelligible text from the other plaintext component: The recovered fragment of the second plaintext can often be extended in one or both directions, and
7810-436: The crypto core with a signature suppression circuit, routed locally within the lower-level metal layers, leading towards both power and EM side-channel attack immunity. Block cipher In cryptography , a block cipher is a deterministic algorithm that operates on fixed-length groups of bits , called blocks . Block ciphers are the elementary building blocks of many cryptographic protocols . They are ubiquitous in
7920-476: The decrypted output of a certain encrypting teletype. According to former MI5 officer Peter Wright , the British Security Service analyzed emissions from French cipher equipment in the 1960s. In the 1980s, Soviet eavesdroppers were suspected of having planted bugs inside IBM Selectric typewriters to monitor the electrical noise generated as the type ball rotated and pitched to strike the paper;
8030-453: The decrypting system chose r {\displaystyle r} , it can compute its inverse modulo m {\displaystyle m} to cancel out the factor r {\displaystyle r} in the result and obtain y d {\displaystyle y^{d}} , the actual result of the decryption. For attacks that require collecting side-channel information from operations with data controlled by
8140-404: The decryption is done on y ⋅ r e {\displaystyle y\cdot r^{e}} to obtain ( y ⋅ r e ) d = y d ⋅ r e ⋅ d = y d ⋅ r {\displaystyle {(y\cdot r^{e})}^{d}=y^{d}\cdot r^{e\cdot d}=y^{d}\cdot r} . Since
8250-733: The end of the European war by up to two years, to determining the eventual result. The war in the Pacific was similarly helped by 'Magic' intelligence. Cryptanalysis of enemy messages played a significant part in the Allied victory in World War II. F. W. Winterbotham , quoted the western Supreme Allied Commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower , at the war's end as describing Ultra intelligence as having been "decisive" to Allied victory. Sir Harry Hinsley , official historian of British Intelligence in World War II, made
8360-401: The extra characters can be combined with the merged plaintext stream to extend the first plaintext. Working back and forth between the two plaintexts, using the intelligibility criterion to check guesses, the analyst may recover much or all of the original plaintexts. (With only two plaintexts in depth, the analyst may not know which one corresponds to which ciphertext, but in practice this is not
8470-419: The first plaintext block before it is encrypted. The resultant ciphertext block is then used as the new initialization vector for the next plaintext block. In the cipher feedback (CFB) mode, which emulates a self-synchronizing stream cipher , the initialization vector is first encrypted and then added to the plaintext block. The output feedback (OFB) mode repeatedly encrypts the initialization vector to create
8580-448: The formulas): before decrypting, that is, before computing the result of y d {\displaystyle y^{d}} for a given ciphertext y {\displaystyle y} , the system picks a random number r {\displaystyle r} and encrypts it with public exponent e {\displaystyle e} to obtain r e {\displaystyle r^{e}} . Then,
8690-456: The hard disk activity indicator to reading a small number of photons emitted by transistors as they change state. Allocation-based side channels also exist and refer to the information that leaks from the allocation (as opposed to the use) of a resource such as network bandwidth to clients that are concurrently requesting the contended resource. Because side-channel attacks rely on the relationship between information emitted (leaked) through
8800-489: The internal operation of the system, although others such as differential power analysis are effective as black-box attacks. The rise of Web 2.0 applications and software-as-a-service has also significantly raised the possibility of side-channel attacks on the web, even when transmissions between a web browser and server are encrypted (e.g. through HTTPS or WiFi encryption), according to researchers from Microsoft Research and Indiana University . Attempts to break
8910-539: The key that unlock[s] other messages. In a sense, then, cryptanalysis is dead. But that is not the end of the story. Cryptanalysis may be dead, but there is – to mix my metaphors – more than one way to skin a cat. Kahn goes on to mention increased opportunities for interception, bugging , side channel attacks , and quantum computers as replacements for the traditional means of cryptanalysis. In 2010, former NSA technical director Brian Snow said that both academic and government cryptographers are "moving very slowly forward in
9020-590: The kind once used in RSA have been factored. The effort was greater than above, but was not unreasonable on fast modern computers. By the start of the 21st century, 150-digit numbers were no longer considered a large enough key size for RSA. Numbers with several hundred digits were still considered too hard to factor in 2005, though methods will probably continue to improve over time, requiring key size to keep pace or other methods such as elliptic curve cryptography to be used. Another distinguishing feature of asymmetric schemes
9130-542: The last plaintext block to the cipher's block size. While many popular schemes described in standards and in the literature have been shown to be vulnerable to padding oracle attacks, a solution that adds a one-bit and then extends the last block with zero-bits, standardized as "padding method 2" in ISO/IEC 9797-1, has been proven secure against these attacks. This property results in the cipher's security degrading quadratically, and needs to be taken into account when selecting
9240-522: The lookup table was accessed. Other partial countermeasures attempt to reduce the amount of information leaked from data-dependent power differences. Some operations use power that is correlated to the number of 1 bits in a secret value. Using a constant-weight code (such as using Fredkin gates or dual-rail encoding) can reduce the leakage of information about the Hamming weight of the secret value, although exploitable correlations are likely to remain unless
9350-565: The message. Poorly designed and implemented indicator systems allowed first Polish cryptographers and then the British cryptographers at Bletchley Park to break the Enigma cipher system. Similar poor indicator systems allowed the British to identify depths that led to the diagnosis of the Lorenz SZ40/42 cipher system, and the comprehensive breaking of its messages without the cryptanalysts seeing
9460-550: The operating system itself. A timing attack watches data movement into and out of the CPU or memory on the hardware running the cryptosystem or algorithm. Simply by observing variations in how long it takes to perform cryptographic operations, it might be possible to determine the entire secret key. Such attacks involve statistical analysis of timing measurements and have been demonstrated across networks. A power-analysis attack can provide even more detailed information by observing
9570-462: The operation of cryptosystems and algorithms can be obtained in this way as well. This is an acoustic cryptanalysis attack . If the surface of the CPU chip, or in some cases the CPU package, can be observed, infrared images can also provide information about the code being executed on the CPU, known as a thermal-imaging attack . An optical side-channel attack examples include gleaning information from
9680-534: The original 128-bit block of plain text. For each key K , E K is a permutation (a bijective mapping) over the set of input blocks. Each key selects one permutation from the set of ( 2 n ) ! {\displaystyle (2^{n})!} possible permutations. The modern design of block ciphers is based on the concept of an iterated product cipher . In his seminal 1949 publication, Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems , Claude Shannon analyzed product ciphers and suggested them as
9790-452: The original cryptosystem may mean that a full break will follow; the successful attacks on DES , MD5 , and SHA-1 were all preceded by attacks on weakened versions. In academic cryptography, a weakness or a break in a scheme is usually defined quite conservatively: it might require impractical amounts of time, memory, or known plaintexts. It also might require the attacker be able to do things many real-world attackers can't: for example,
9900-438: The other for decryption, D . Both algorithms accept two inputs: an input block of size n bits and a key of size k bits; and both yield an n -bit output block. The decryption algorithm D is defined to be the inverse function of encryption, i.e., D = E . More formally, a block cipher is specified by an encryption function which takes as input a key K , of bit length k (called
10010-441: The other half. The two halves are then swapped. Let F {\displaystyle {\rm {F}}} be the round function and let K 0 , K 1 , … , K n {\displaystyle K_{0},K_{1},\ldots ,K_{n}} be the sub-keys for the rounds 0 , 1 , … , n {\displaystyle 0,1,\ldots ,n} respectively. Then
10120-544: The pen-and-paper methods of the past, through machines like the British Bombes and Colossus computers at Bletchley Park in World War II , to the mathematically advanced computerized schemes of the present. Methods for breaking modern cryptosystems often involve solving carefully constructed problems in pure mathematics , the best-known being integer factorization . In encryption , confidential information (called
10230-415: The pen-and-paper systems of the past, and now seems to have the upper hand against pure cryptanalysis. The historian David Kahn notes: Many are the cryptosystems offered by the hundreds of commercial vendors today that cannot be broken by any known methods of cryptanalysis. Indeed, in such systems even a chosen plaintext attack , in which a selected plaintext is matched against its ciphertext, cannot yield
10340-436: The plaintext and the key as inputs and applies several alternating rounds consisting of a substitution stage followed by a permutation stage —to produce each block of ciphertext output. The non-linear substitution stage mixes the key bits with those of the plaintext, creating Shannon's confusion . The linear permutation stage then dissipates redundancies, creating diffusion . A substitution box (S-box) substitutes
10450-419: The power and EM information across multiple devices has been demonstrated with the potential to break the secret key of a different but identical device in as low as a single trace. Historical analogues to modern side-channel attacks are known. A recently declassified NSA document reveals that as far back as 1943, an engineer with Bell telephone observed decipherable spikes on an oscilloscope associated with
10560-587: The power consumption of a hardware device such as CPU or cryptographic circuit. These attacks are roughly categorized into simple power analysis (SPA) and differential power analysis (DPA). One example is Collide+Power, which affects nearly all CPUs. Other examples use machine learning approaches. Fluctuations in current also generate radio waves , enabling attacks that analyze measurements of electromagnetic (EM) emanations. These attacks typically involve similar statistical techniques as power-analysis attacks. A deep-learning-based side-channel attack , using
10670-409: The problem. The security of two-key cryptography depends on mathematical questions in a way that single-key cryptography generally does not, and conversely links cryptanalysis to wider mathematical research in a new way. Asymmetric schemes are designed around the (conjectured) difficulty of solving various mathematical problems. If an improved algorithm can be found to solve the problem, then the system
10780-486: The protocol or algorithm itself (e.g. flaws found in a cryptanalysis of a cryptographic algorithm ) or minor, but potentially devastating, mistakes or oversights in the implementation . (Cryptanalysis also includes searching for side-channel attacks.) Timing information, power consumption, electromagnetic leaks, and sound are examples of extra information which could be exploited to facilitate side-channel attacks. Some side-channel attacks require technical knowledge of
10890-765: The repetition that had been exploited to break the Vigenère system. In World War I , the breaking of the Zimmermann Telegram was instrumental in bringing the United States into the war. In World War II , the Allies benefitted enormously from their joint success cryptanalysis of the German ciphers – including the Enigma machine and the Lorenz cipher – and Japanese ciphers, particularly 'Purple' and JN-25 . 'Ultra' intelligence has been credited with everything between shortening
11000-471: The risk of surreptitious installation of microphones (to counter acoustic attacks) and other micro-monitoring devices (against CPU power-draw or thermal-imaging attacks). Another countermeasure (still in the first category) is to jam the emitted channel with noise. For instance, a random delay can be added to deter timing attacks, although adversaries can compensate for these delays by averaging multiple measurements (or, more generally, using more measurements in
11110-408: The second category (decorrelation) is a technique known as blinding . In the case of RSA decryption with secret exponent d {\displaystyle d} and corresponding encryption exponent e {\displaystyle e} and modulus m {\displaystyle m} , the technique applies as follows (for simplicity, the modular reduction by m is omitted in
11220-498: The sender, usually a string of letters, numbers, or bits , called a cryptographic key . The concept is that even if an unauthorized person gets access to the ciphertext during transmission, without the secret key they cannot convert it back to plaintext. Encryption has been used throughout history to send important military, diplomatic and commercial messages, and today is very widely used in computer networking to protect email and internet communication. The goal of cryptanalysis
11330-696: The storage and exchange of data, where such data is secured and authenticated via encryption . A block cipher uses blocks as an unvarying transformation. Even a secure block cipher is suitable for the encryption of only a single block of data at a time, using a fixed key. A multitude of modes of operation have been designed to allow their repeated use in a secure way to achieve the security goals of confidentiality and authenticity . However, block ciphers may also feature as building blocks in other cryptographic protocols, such as universal hash functions and pseudorandom number generators . A block cipher consists of two paired algorithms , one for encryption, E , and
11440-949: The sub-keys for the rounds 0 , 1 , … , n {\displaystyle 0,1,\ldots ,n} respectively. Then the basic operation is as follows: Split the plaintext block into two equal pieces, ( L 0 {\displaystyle L_{0}} , R 0 {\displaystyle R_{0}} ) For each round i = 0 , 1 , … , n {\displaystyle i=0,1,\dots ,n} , compute where T i = F ( L i ′ − R i ′ , K i ) {\displaystyle T_{i}=\mathrm {F} (L_{i}'-R_{i}',K_{i})} and ( L 0 ′ , R 0 ′ ) = H ( L 0 , R 0 ) {\displaystyle (L_{0}',R_{0}')=\mathrm {H} (L_{0},R_{0})} Then
11550-467: The system, for example, the cryptographic key , partial state information, full or partial plaintexts and so forth. The term cryptophthora (secret degradation) is sometimes used to express the degradation of secret key material resulting from side-channel leakage. A cache side-channel attack works by monitoring security critical operations such as AES T-table entry or modular exponentiation or multiplication or memory accesses. The attacker then
11660-494: Was a key block, which is required to securely interchange symmetric keys or PINs with other actors in the banking industry . This secure interchange is performed using the AKB format. The Atalla Box protected over 90% of all ATM networks in operation as of 1998, and Atalla products still secure the majority of the world's ATM transactions as of 2014. The publication of the DES cipher by
11770-471: Was on sample size for use of frequency analysis. In Europe, Italian scholar Giambattista della Porta (1535–1615) was the author of a seminal work on cryptanalysis, De Furtivis Literarum Notis . Successful cryptanalysis has undoubtedly influenced history; the ability to read the presumed-secret thoughts and plans of others can be a decisive advantage. For example, in England in 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots
11880-560: Was particularly evident before and during World War II , where efforts to crack Axis ciphers required new levels of mathematical sophistication. Moreover, automation was first applied to cryptanalysis in that era with the Polish Bomba device, the British Bombe , the use of punched card equipment, and in the Colossus computers – the first electronic digital computers to be controlled by
11990-584: Was the most significant cryptanalytic advance until World War II. Al-Kindi's Risalah fi Istikhraj al-Mu'amma described the first cryptanalytic techniques, including some for polyalphabetic ciphers , cipher classification, Arabic phonetics and syntax, and most importantly, gave the first descriptions on frequency analysis. He also covered methods of encipherments, cryptanalysis of certain encipherments, and statistical analysis of letters and letter combinations in Arabic. An important contribution of Ibn Adlan (1187–1268)
12100-498: Was tried and executed for treason as a result of her involvement in three plots to assassinate Elizabeth I of England . The plans came to light after her coded correspondence with fellow conspirators was deciphered by Thomas Phelippes . In Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries, the idea of a polyalphabetic substitution cipher was developed, among others by the French diplomat Blaise de Vigenère (1523–96). For some three centuries,
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