Cryptanalysis

1
Cryptanalysis

• Four kinds of attacks (recall)
• The objective determine the key (Herckhoff
  principle)
• Assumption English plaintext text
• Basic techniques frequency analysis based on
• Probabilities of occurrences of 26 letters
• Common digrams and trigrams.

2
Cryptanalysis -- statistical analysis

• Probabilities of occurrences of 26 letters
• E, having probability about 0.120 (12)
• T,A,O,I,N,S,H,R, each between 0.06 and 0.09
• D,L, each around 0.04
• C,U,M,W,F,G,Y,P,B, each between 0.015 and 0.028
• V,K,J,X,Q,Z, each less than 0.01
• See table 1.1, page 26
• 30 common digrams (in decreasing order)
• TH, HE, IN, ER, AN, RE,
• 12 common trigrams (in decreasing order)
• THE, ING,AND,HER,ERE,

3
Cryptanalysis of Affine Cipher

• Suppose a attacker got the following Affine
  cipher
• FMXVEDKAPHFERBNDKRXRSREFNORUDSDKDVSHVUFEDKAPRKDLYE
  VLRHHRH
• Cryptanalysis steps
• Compute the frequency of occurrences of letters
• R 8, D7, E,H,K5, F,S,V 4 (see table 1.2, page
  27)
• Guess the letters, solve the equations, decrypt
  the cipher, judge correct or not.
• First guess R??e, D??t, i.e., eK(4)17,
  eK(19)3
• Thus, 4ab17 ? a6, b19, since gcd
  (6,26)2, so incorrect.
• 19ab3
• Next guess R??e, E??t, the result will be a13,
  not correct.
• Guess again R??e, H??t, the result will be a3,
  b5.
• Decrypt the cipher algorithmsarequitegeneraldefin
  itionsofarithmeticprocesses
• If the decrypted text is not meaningful, try
  another guess.
• Need programming compute frequency and solve
  equations
• Since Affine cipher has 1226312 keys, can write
  a program to try all keys.

4
Cryptanalysis of substitution cipher

• Final goal is to find the corresponding plaintext
  letter for each ciphertext letter.
• Ciphertext example 1.11, page 28
• Steps
• Frequency computation, see table 1.3, page 29
• Guess Z??e, quite sure
• C,D,F,J,M,R,Y are t,a,o,i,n,s,h,r, but not exact
• Look at digrams, especially Z or Z-.
• Since ZW occurs 4 times, but no WZ, so guess W??d
  (because ed is a common digram, but not de)
• Continue to guess
• Look at the trigrams, especially THE, ING, AND,

5
Cryptanalysis of Vigenere cipher

• In some sense, the cryptanalysis of Vigenere
  cipher is a systematic method and can be totally
  programmed.
• Step 1 determine the length m of the keyword
• Kasiski test and index of coincidence
• Step 2 determine K(k1,k2,,km)
• Determine each ki separately.

6
Kasiski testdetermine keyword length m

• Observation two identical plaintext segments
  will be encrypted to the same ciphertext whenever
  they appear ? positions apart in plaintext, where
  ??0 mod m. Vice Versa.
• So search ciphertext for pairs of identical
  segments, record the distance between their
  starting positions, such as ?1, ?2,, then m
  should divide all of ?is. i.e., m divides gcd of
  all ?is.

7
Index of coincidence

• Can be used to determine m as well as to confirm
  m, determined by Kasiski test
• Definition suppose xx1x2,,xn is a string of
  length n. The index of coincidence of x, denoted
  by Ic(x), is defined to be the probability that
  two random elements of x are identical.
• Denoted the frequencies of A,B,,Z in x by
  f0,f1,,f25

25
fi 2
?( )
fi(fi-1)
i0
i0

( Formula IC )
--Ic(x)
n 2
n(n-1)
( )
8
Index of coincidence (cont.)
Suppose x is a string of English text, denote the
expected probability of occurrences of A,B,,Z by
p0,p1,,p25 with values from table 1.1, then
Ic(x) ? ?pi2 0.08220.01520.00120.065 (since
the probability that two random elements both are
A is p02, both are B is p12,)
Question if y is a ciphertext obtained by shift
cipher, what is the Ic(y)?
Answer should be 0.065, because the individual
probabilities will be permuted,
but the ?pi2 will be unchanged.
Therefore, suppose yy1y2yn is the ciphertext
from Vigenere cipher. For any given m, divide y
into m substrings y1y1ym1y2m1 if m
is indeed the keyword length, then
y2y2ym2y2m2 each yi is a shift
cipher, Ic(yi) is about 0.065.
ymymy2my3m otherwise, Ic(yi) ?
26(1/26)2 0.038.
9
Index of coincidence (cont.)
For purpose of verify keyword length m, divide
the ciphertext into m substrings, compute the
index of coincidence by formula IC for each
substring. If all IC values of the substrings are
around 0.065, then m is the correct keyword
length. Otherwise m is not the correct keyword
length.
If want to use Ic to determine correct keyword
length m, what to do?
Beginning from m2,3, until an m, for which
all substrings have IC value around 0.065.
Now, how to determine keyword K(k1,k2,,km)?
Assume m is given.
10
Determine keyword K(k1,k2,,km)

• Determine each ki independently.
• Observation
• 2.1 let f0,f1,,f25 denote the frequencies of
  A,B,,Z in yi and nn/m
• 2.2 then probability distribution of 26 letters
  in yi is

2.3 if the shift key is ki, then f0ki (i.e.,
Aki) is the frequency of a in the
corresponding plaintext xi, , f25ki is the
frequency of z in xi. Since xi is normal
English text, probability distribution of
fki f25ki n, , n
should be close to ideal probability distributio
n p0,p1,,p25.
11
Determine keyword K(k1,k2,,km) (cont.)
3. Therefore, define
fig
When gki, Mg will generally be around 0.065
(i.e., ?i025 pi2). Otherwise Mg will be quite
smaller than 0.065.
So let g from 0, until 25, compute Mg, and for
some g, if Mg is around 0.065, then kig.
12
Cryptanalysis of Vigenere cipher--example

• Example 1.12, page 33.
• Using Kasiski test to determine the keyword
  length
• CHR appears five times at 1,166,236,276,286
• the distance is 165, 235,275,285, the gcd is 5,
  so m5.
• Using index of coincidence to verify m5.
• Divide ciphertext into y1, y2, y3, y4, y5
• Compute f0,f1,,f25 for each yi and then Ic(yi),
  get 0.063,
• 0.068,0.069,0.061,0.072, so m5 is correct.
• Determine ki for i1,,5.
• Compute Mg for g0,1,,25 and if Mg ? 0.065, then
  let kig. where

fig
As a result, k19,k20,k313,k44,k519, i.e.,
JANET
13
Cryptanalysis of Hill cipher

• Difficult to break based on ciphertext only
• Easily to break based on both ciphertext and
  plaintext.
• Suppose given at least m distinct
  plaintext-ciphertext pairs xj(x1,j,x2,j,,xm,j)
• yj(y1,j,y2,j,,ym,j)
• then define two matrices X(xi,j) and Y(yi,j)
• Let YXK, if X is invertible, then KX-1Y.

14
Cryptanalysis of Hill cipher--example

• Suppose plaintext is friday
• and ciphertext is PQCFKU
• and the m2. Then eK(f,r)(P,Q),
  eK(i,d)(C,F).
• That is

15 16 2 5
5 17 8 3
( ) ( )K
5 17 8 3
15 16 2 5
9 1 2 15
15 16 2 5
7 19 8 3
K( )-1( )( )( )( )
Then using the third pair, i.e., (a,y) and (K,U)
to verify K.
In case m is unknown, try m2,3,
15
Cryptanalysis of LFSR stream cipher

• Vulnerable to known-plaintext attack.
• Suppose m, plaintext binary string x1,x2,,xn and
  ciphertext binary string y1,y2,,yn are known, as
  long as ngt2m, the key can be broken
• Keystream is zi(xiyi) mod 2. (i1,2,,n)
• Then the initialization vector of K is z1,, zm.
• Next is to determine coefficients (c0,c1,,cm-1)
  of K
• (recall that Zim ?m-1j0cjzij mod 2 for
  all i?1)
• i.e,

z1 z2 zm z2 z3 zm1 zm zm1
z2m-1

• (zm1,zm2,,z2m)(c0,c1,,cm-1)

16
Cryptanalysis of LFSR stream cipher (cont.)
Therefore
-1
Example 1.14, page 37.