What is DES-X? - encryption

What is DES-X?
And
DES-X and DES, are they backwards compatible?

Well, DES-X is a variant of the DES block cipher (as I'm sure you already knew).
The reason for the introduction of the DES-X was an attempt to increase the security of the original DES algorithm (which was limited to a 56bit key). The proposed solution with DEX-X was to use two more 64-bit keys which would be applied to make it harder for an attacker to guess the key of the DES algorithm. Basically, the first additional key is XORed to the plain text which is then encrypted with DES. The second additional key is XORed to the resulting cypher.
However, as far the backwards compatibility.. I'm not sure what you mean by that? If you're asking if you can use DES to decrypt DES-X messages then NO (it the strict sense). If you're asking whether a DES-X implementation could be configured to encrypt/decrypt DES messages then the answer is YES.
Here's an example:
DES(msg) = CYPHER
DES-X(msg) = K2 X DES(K1 x msg) = CYPER-X
If you choose K2 and K1 to be the all 0 then:
DES-x(msg) = K2 x DES(K1 x msg) [where K1 = 0, K2 =0] = DES(msg)
It should be pointed out that what I mean by making K1 and K2 0 is actually choosing a key which is 64 bits of 0 = {0,0,0,0,0...0} (64 times). Such a key does not modify the plaintext of the cypher at all when the XOR operation is applied.

DES and DES-X are both block ciphers.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DES-X
for more details. In short, DES-X adds key whitening.

Here's the wikipedia article on DES-X. DES-X increases the key size by appending XOR'd versions of the key before and after the encryption.

The summary of this paper says that DES-X is "compatible." However, I'm not sure if that includes backwards-compatibility.
http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/papers/cryptobytes.ps

Related

RSA/ECB/PKCS1 Padding & AES/CBC/PKCS5Padding Encryption / Decryption

I have an API to call where I have to encrypt my data using RSA/ECB/PKCS1 Padding & AES/CBC/PKCS5PADDING.
Sample Data: {"KEY":"VALUE"}
Step.1:
I have to generate a random number of 16 digit. eg: '1234567890123456'
Step.2:
Do RSA/ECB/PKCS1Padding to random number and base64Encode the result. we get "encrypted_key"
Step.3:
Concatenate random number & data:
DATA = 1234567890123456{"KEY":"VALUE"}
Step.4:
Do AES/CBC/PKCS5Padding on DATA (from Step 3) using random number(1234567890123456) as KEY & Base64Encoded random number as IV. we get "ENCRYPTED_DATA"
So, for Step 1 I am using JSEncrypt javascript library.
for Step 4 I am using CrytoJS.AES.encrypt() function. I am pretty sure that my JSEncrypt function is running fine as the client is able to decrypt it but client is not able to decrypt my data. I feel that I am making a mistake while using CryptoJS.
Can someone guide me properly on how to use the library.
What I am doing is:
KEY = '1234567890123456'
IV = MTIzNDU2Nzg5MDEyMzQ1Ng== (result of btoa('1234567890123456') )
DATA = "1234567890123456{"KEY":"VAL"}"
cryptedData = Crypto.AES.encrypt(DATA, KEY, {iv: IV, mode: CryptoJS.mode.CBC,padding:CryptoJS.pad.Pkcs7})
I am told to use PKCS5Padding in AES/CBC Encryption ( Step 4 ) but it seems that AES does not support PKCS5Padding but PKCS7Padding.
I think I am making a mistake in the way I am passing KEY & IV to CryptoJS.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
For the start lets see why are you doing the exercise. RSA is intended to encode only limited amout of data. So we use "hybrid encryption", where the data are encrypted using a symmetric cipher with a random key and the key itself is encrypted using RSA
Encryption works on binary data, to safely transmit binary data, the data are encoded to printable form (hex or base64)
Step.1: I have to generate a random number of 16 digit
What we see is 16 digits 0-9. That's not really safe. Generating 16 digits you will get a key of 10^16, which is equals of approx 2^53 (if I did the math wrong, please comment).
You need to generate 16 random bytes (digits 0-256 resulting in 2^128 key). That is your DEK (data encryption key).
You may encode the DEK to be in printable form, in hexadecimal encoding it will have 32 characters.
Step.2:
ok, you now get encrypted encoded_encryption_key
Step 3, Step 4
And here you should understand what are you doing.
encrypt DATA using DEK ( not encoded random number in binary form), you will get encrypted_data. You can encode the result to encoded_encrypted_data
concatenate the encrypted key and encrypted data. It. is up to you to choose if you encode it before or after encoding. I suggest you make concatenation of encoded_encryption_key and encoded_encrypted_data with some separator, because if RSA key length changes, the length of encoded_encryption_key changes too
Make sure to discuss with the client what format is expected exactly.
Notes:
IV needs to be 16 bytes long for AES and for CryptoJS I believe it needs to be Hex encoded, so using btoa may not be the best idea. I believe the CryptoJS just trims the value to 16 bytes, but formally it is not correct.
CBC cipher needs some sort of integrity check, I suggest to add some HMAC or signature to the result (otherwise someone could change the ciphertext without you being able to detect the tamper)
but it seems that AES does not support PKCS5Padding but PKCS7Padding.
Indeed AES supports Pkcs7. Pkcs5 is functionally the same, but defined on 64 blocks. The designation is still used in Java as heritage from DES encryption.

RSA: plain text to cipher text

I'm trying to solve the following question (see below)
enter image description here
My understanding what in order to go encrypt the plain text (and get the cipher text). I must compute 9^15 mod 2 to get the cipher text? How is the answer 6?
Many thanks in advance!
You are confusing the modulus n and the public key e.
In your case, the RSA modulus is 15 and the public exponent is 2, and, in general, we write the public key is as a tuple (n,e)=(15,2)
now, RSA (textbook) encryption calculated as m^e = mod n; as a result
9^2 = 6 mod 15
see at WolframAlpha
Note: RSA encryption needs padding to be secure against some attacks.
as James noted in the comment, this cannot be RSA.
phi(15) = (3-1)*(5-1) = 8.
The inverse of 2 doesn't exist in mod 8. therefore there is no private key. Interestingly, in this case inverse of 3,5,7 mod 8 are also 3,5,8, respectively.
The 2 suggests that this is actually Rabin Cryptosystem.

Encryption: TCB (Tweaked CodeBook) algorithm - what is it?

Can someone please provide a description of TCB algorithm?
My cryptographic skills are a little bit rusty - but IMHO, Tweaked Codebook = Tweakable Block Cipher.
It's basically ECB with a Tweak, that "patches" ECB's biggests flaws: identical plaintext blocks result in identical ciphertext (exposing your ciphertext to malicious substitution and showing data patterns).
With a plaintext message P, cut in n-bits blocks X1, X2, X3... Xi... Xn
Xi (XOR) Tweak(i) -> CC
Encrypt_function(CC) -> Ci
Depending on your implementation, your Tweak is generated using a function of your choice (taking your block number as a parameter). A very simple (unsecure?) one could be:
Tweak(i) = i
I'm not 100% OK with my answer; at least that's what I remember and that's what I get when looking at an extract of IEEE 1619-2007. I'd really like to read more on this!

What is the difference between DSA and RSA?

It appears they are both encryption algorithms that require public and private keys. Why would I pick one versus the other to provide encryption in my client server application?
Check AVA's answer below.
My old answer seems wrong
Referring, https://web.archive.org/web/20140212143556/http://courses.cs.tamu.edu:80/pooch/665_spring2008/Australian-sec-2006/less19.html
RSA
RSA encryption and decryption are commutative
hence it may be used directly as a digital signature scheme
given an RSA scheme {(e,R), (d,p,q)}
to sign a message M, compute:
S = M power d (mod R)
to verify a signature, compute:
M = S power e(mod R) = M power e.d(mod R) = M(mod R)
RSA can be used both for encryption and digital signatures,
simply by reversing the order in which the exponents are used:
the secret exponent (d) to create the signature, the public exponent (e)
for anyone to verify the signature. Everything else is identical.
DSA (Digital Signature Algorithm)
DSA is a variant on the ElGamal and Schnorr algorithms.
It creates a 320 bit signature, but with 512-1024 bit security
again rests on difficulty of computing discrete logarithms
has been quite widely accepted.
DSA Key Generation
firstly shared global public key values (p,q,g) are chosen:
choose a large prime p = 2 power L
where L= 512 to 1024 bits and is a multiple of 64
choose q, a 160 bit prime factor of p-1
choose g = h power (p-1)/q
for any h<p-1, h(p-1)/q(mod p)>1
then each user chooses a private key and computes their public key:
choose x<q
compute y = g power x(mod p)
DSA key generation is related to, but somewhat more complex than El Gamal.
Mostly because of the use of the secondary 160-bit modulus q used to help
speed up calculations and reduce the size of the resulting signature.
DSA Signature Creation and Verification
to sign a message M
generate random signature key k, k<q
compute
r = (g power k(mod p))(mod q)
s = k-1.SHA(M)+ x.r (mod q)
send signature (r,s) with message
to verify a signature, compute:
w = s-1(mod q)
u1= (SHA(M).w)(mod q)
u2= r.w(mod q)
v = (g power u1.y power u2(mod p))(mod q)
if v=r then the signature is verified
Signature creation is again similar to ElGamal with the use of a
per message temporary signature key k, but doing calc first mod p,
then mod q to reduce the size of the result. Note that the use of
the hash function SHA is explicit here. Verification also consists of
comparing two computations, again being a bit more complex than,
but related to El Gamal.
Note that nearly all the calculations are mod q, and
hence are much faster.
But, In contrast to RSA, DSA can be used only for digital signatures
DSA Security
The presence of a subliminal channel exists in many schemes (any that need a random number to be chosen), not just DSA. It emphasises the need for "system security", not just a good algorithm.
Btw, you cannot encrypt with DSA, only sign. Although they are mathematically equivalent (more or less) you cannot use DSA in practice as an encryption scheme, only as a digital signature scheme.
With reference to man ssh-keygen, the length of a DSA key is restricted to exactly 1024 bit to remain compliant with NIST's FIPS 186-2. Nonetheless, longer DSA keys are theoretically possible; FIPS 186-3 explicitly allows them. Furthermore, security is no longer guaranteed with 1024 bit long RSA or DSA keys.
In conclusion, a 2048 bit RSA key is currently the best choice.
MORE PRECAUTIONS TO TAKE
Establishing a secure SSH connection entails more than selecting safe encryption key pair technology. In view of Edward Snowden's NSA revelations, one has to be even more vigilant than what previously was deemed sufficient.
To name just one example, using a safe key exchange algorithm is equally important. Here is a nice overview of current best SSH hardening practices.
And in addition to the above nice answers.
DSA uses Discrete logarithm.
RSA uses Integer Factorization.
RSA stands for Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman.

How to decide if the chosen password is correct?

If an encrypted file exists and someone wants to decrypt it, there are several methods do try.
For example, if you would chose a brute force attack, that's easy: just try all possible keys and you will find the correct one. For this question, it doesn't matter that this might take too long.
But trying keys means the following steps:
Chose key
Decrypt data with key
Check if decryption was successful
Besides the problem that you would need to know the algorithm that was used for the encryption, I cannot imagine how one would do #3.
Here is why: After decrypting the data, I get some "other" data. In case of an encrypted plain text file in a language that I can understand, I can now check if the result is a text in that langauge.
If it would be a known file type, I could check for specific file headers.
But since one tries to decrypt something secret, it is most likely unknown what kind of information there will be if correctly decrypted.
How would one check if a decryption result is correct if it is unknown what to look for?
Like you suggest, one would expect the plaintext to be of some know format, e.g., a JPEG image, a PDF file, etc. The idea would be that it is very unlikely that a given ciphertext can be decrypted into both a valid JPEG image and a valid PDF file (but see below).
But it is actually not that important. When one talks about a cryptosystem being secure, one (roughly) talks about the odds of you being able to guess the plaintext corresponding to a given ciphertext. So I pick a random message m and encrypts it c = E(m). I give you c and if you cannot guess m, then we say the cryptosystem is secure, otherwise it's broken.
This is just a simple security definition. There are other definitions that require the system to be able to hide known plaintexts (semantic security): you give me two messages, I encrypt one of them, and you will not be able to tell which message I chose.
The point is, that in these definitions, we are not concerned with the format of the plaintexts, all we require is that you cannot guess the plaintext that was encrypted. So there is no step 3 :-)
By not considering your step 3, we make the question of security as clear as possible: instead of arguing about how hard it is to guess which format you used (zip, gzip, bzip2, ...) we only talk about the odds of breaking the system compared to the odds of guessing the key. It is an old principle that you should concentrate all your security in the key -- it simplifies things dramatically when your only assumption is the secrecy of the key.
Finally, note that some encryption schemes makes it impossible for you to verify if you have the correct key since all keys are legal. The one-time pad is an extreme example such a scheme: you take your plaintext m, choose a perfectly random key k and compute the ciphertext as c = m XOR k. This gives you a completely random ciphertext, it is perfectly secure (the only perfectly secure cryptosystem, btw).
When searching for an encryption key, you cannot know when you've found the right one. This is because c could be an encryption of any file with the same length as m: if you encrypt the message m' with the key *k' = c XOR m' you'll see that you get the same ciphertext again, thus you cannot know if m or m' was the original message.
Instead of thinking of exclusive-or, you can think of the one-time pad like this: I give you the number 42 and tell you that is is the sum of two integers (negative, positive, you don't know). One integer is the message, the other is the key and 42 is the ciphertext. Like above, it makes no sense for you to guess the key -- if you want the message to be 100, you claim the key is -58, if you want the message to be 0, you claim the key is 42, etc. One time pad works exactly like this, but on bit values instead.
About reusing the key in one-time pad: let's say my key is 7 and you see the ciphertexts 10 and 20, corresponding to plaintexts 3 and 13. From the ciphertexts alone, you now know that the difference in plaintexts is 10. If you somehow gain knowledge of one of the plaintext, you can now derive the other! If the numbers correspond to individual letters, you can begin looking at several such differences and try to solve the resulting crossword puzzle (or let a program do it based on frequency analysis of the language in question).
You could use heuristics like the unix
file
command does to check for a known file type. If you have decrypted data that has no recognizable type, decrypting it won't help you anyway, since you can't interpret it, so it's still as good as encrypted.
I wrote a tool a little while ago that checked if a file was possibly encrypted by simply checking the distribution of byte values, since encrypted files should be indistinguishable from random noise. The assumption here then is that an improperly decrypted file retains the random nature, while a properly decrypted file will exhibit structure.
#!/usr/bin/env python
import math
import sys
import os
MAGIC_COEFF=3
def get_random_bytes(filename):
BLOCK_SIZE=1024*1024
BLOCKS=10
f=open(filename)
bytes=list(f.read(BLOCK_SIZE))
if len(bytes) < BLOCK_SIZE:
return bytes
f.seek(0, 2)
file_len = f.tell()
index = BLOCK_SIZE
cnt=0
while index < file_len and cnt < BLOCKS:
f.seek(index)
more_bytes = f.read(BLOCK_SIZE)
bytes.extend(more_bytes)
index+=ord(os.urandom(1))*BLOCK_SIZE
cnt+=1
return bytes
def failed_n_gram(n,bytes):
print "\t%d-gram analysis"%(n)
N = len(bytes)/n
states = 2**(8*n)
print "\tN: %d states: %d"%(N, states)
if N < states:
print "\tinsufficient data"
return False
histo = [0]*states
P = 1.0/states
expected = N/states * 1.0
# I forgot how this was derived, or what it is suppose to be
magic = math.sqrt(N*P*(1-P))*MAGIC_COEFF
print "\texpected: %f magic: %f" %(expected, magic)
idx=0
while idx<len(bytes)-n:
val=0
for x in xrange(n):
val = val << 8
val = val | ord(bytes[idx+x])
histo[val]+=1
idx+=1
count=histo[val]
if count - expected > magic:
print "\tfailed: %s occured %d times" %( hex(val), count)
return True
# need this check because the absence of certain bytes is also
# a sign something is up
for i in xrange(len(histo)):
count = histo[i]
if expected-count > magic:
print "\tfailed: %s occured %d times" %( hex(i), count)
return True
print ""
return False
def main():
for f in sys.argv[1:]:
print f
rand_bytes = get_random_bytes(f)
if failed_n_gram(3,rand_bytes):
continue
if failed_n_gram(2,rand_bytes):
continue
if failed_n_gram(1,rand_bytes):
continue
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
I find this works reasonable well:
$ entropy.py ~/bin/entropy.py entropy.py.enc entropy.py.zip
/Users/steve/bin/entropy.py
1-gram analysis
N: 1680 states: 256
expected: 6.000000 magic: 10.226918
failed: 0xa occured 17 times
entropy.py.enc
1-gram analysis
N: 1744 states: 256
expected: 6.000000 magic: 10.419895
entropy.py.zip
1-gram analysis
N: 821 states: 256
expected: 3.000000 magic: 7.149270
failed: 0x0 occured 11 times
Here .enc is the source ran through:
openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -in entropy.py -out entropy.py.enc
And .zip is self-explanatory.
A few caveats:
It doesn't check the entire file, just the first KB, then random blocks from the file. So if a file was random data appended with say a jpeg, it will fool the program. The only way to be sure if to check the entire file.
In my experience, the code reliably detects when a file is unencrypted (since nearly all useful data has structure), but due to its statistical nature may sometimes misdiagnose an encrypted/random file.
As it has been pointed out, this kind of analysis will fail for OTP, since you can make it say anything you want.
Use at your own risk, and most certainly not as the only means of checking your results.
One of the ways is compressing the source data with some standard algorithm like zip. If after decryption you can unzip the result - it's decrypted right. Compression is almost usually done by encryption programs prior to encryption - because it's another step the bruteforcer will need to repeat for each trial and lose time on it and because encrypted data is almost surely uncompressible (size doesn't decrease after compression with a chained algorithm).
Without a more clearly defined scenario, I can only point to cryptanalysis methods. I would say it's generally accepted that validating the result is an easy part of cryptanalysis. In comparison to decrypting even a known cypher, a thorough validation check costs little cpu.
are you seriously asking questions like this?
well if it was known whats inside then you would not need to decrypt it anywayz right?
somehow this has nothing to do with programming question its more mathematical. I took some encryption math classes at my university.
And you can not confirm without a lot of data points.
Sure if your result makes sense and its clear it is meaningful in plain english (or whatever language is used) but to answer your question.
If you were able to decrypt you should be able to encrypt as well.
So encrypt the result using reverse process of decryption and if you get same results you might be golden...if not something is possibly wrong.

Resources