IT ESSENTIALS REPORT

ON
CRYPTOGRAPHY

SUBMITTED BY
A.SAKTHI SRI

EEE11140

PALLAVI KADIRIMANGALAM EEE11130

N.GEETHA
EEE1117

CRYPTOGRAPHY
DEFINITION
Cryptography is derived from the Greek word krypts, which means "hidden,
secret. It is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the
presence of third parties (called adversaries). Moreover, it is about constructing
and analyzing protocols that block adversaries. Various aspects in information
security such as data confidentiality, data integrity, authentication, and nonrepudiation are central to modern cryptography. Modern cryptography exists at
the intersection of the disciplines of mathematics, computer science, and
electrical engineering. Applications of cryptography include ATM cards, computer
passwords, and electronic commerce.

HISTORY OF CRYPTOGRAPHY
The earliest forms of cryptology used were transposition ciphers, which rearrange
the order of letters in a message (e.g., 'hello world' becomes 'ehlol owrdl' in a
trivially simple rearrangement scheme), and substitution ciphers, which
systematically replace letters or groups of letters with other letters or groups of
letters (e.g., 'fly at once' becomes 'gmz bu podf' by replacing each letter with the
one following it in the Latin alphabet). Simple versions of either have never
offered much confidentiality from enterprising opponents. An early substitution
cipher was the Caesar cipher, in which each letter in the plaintext was replaced by
a letter some fixed number of positions further down the alphabet.
The birth of the computer era paved way to cryptanalysis of the new mechanical
devices which proved to be both difficult and laborious. In the United Kingdom,
cryptanalytic efforts at Bletchley Park during WWII spurred the development of
more efficient means for carrying out repetitious tasks. This culminated in the
development of the Colossus, the world's first fully electronic, digital,
programmable computer, which assisted in the decryption of ciphers generated by
the German Army's Lorenz SZ40/42 machine.
Extensive open academic research into cryptography is relatively recent; it began
only in the mid-1970s. In recent times, IBM personnel designed the algorithm that
became the Federal (i.e., US) Data Encryption Standard. Since then, cryptography
has become a widely used tool in communications, computer networks, and
computer security generally. Some modern cryptographic techniques can only
keep their keys secret if certain mathematical problems are intractable, such as
the integer factorization or the discrete logarithm problems, so there are deep
connections with abstract mathematics. There are no absolute proofs that a

cryptographic technique is secure at best, there are proofs that some techniques
are secure if some computational problem is difficult to solve, or certain
assumptions about implementation or practical use are met.

OBJECTIVE OF CRYPTOGRAPHY
Confidentiality That is the information should not be understood by anyone other than
for whom it was unintended.
Integrity The message should not be altered in storage or during the transmission
between the sender and the intended without the altercation being detected.
Authentication The sender and the receiver should be able to confirm each others
identity as well as the origin/destination of the information.
Non repudiation The creator/sender of the information should not be able to deny at a
later stage his /her intentions in the creation or the transmission of the message

PARTS OF A CRYPTOGRAPHIC PROCESS

All cryptographic processes have 4 very important parts.
Plain text That is the unscrambled information to be transmitted. It could be a simple text document, a credit
card number, a password, a bank account number, or sensitive information such as payroll data, personnel
information, or a secret formula being transmitted between organizations.
Cipher text - Represents plain text rendered unintelligible by the application of a Mathematical algorithm. Cipher
text is the encrypted plain text that is transmitted to the receiver.
Cryptographic Algorithm - A mathematical formula used to scramble the plain text to yield cipher text.
Converting plain text to cipher text using the cryptographic algorithm is called encryption, and converting cipher
text back to plain text using the same cryptographic algorithm is called decryption.
Key - A mathematical value, formula, or process that determines how a plaintext message
is encrypted or decrypted. The key is the only way to decipher the scrambled information.

TYPES OF CRYPTOGRAPHY
Symmetric cryptography
Prior to the Internet, use of cryptography was structured around symmetric cryptography (often called
conventional cryptography) and frequently involved the use of special purpose hardware to execute the
algorithms. Symmetric cryptography uses the same key to both encrypt and decrypt information. That implies
that both sender and receiver must possess the same key.
Public key cryptography

With the advent of the Internet, the use of symmetric cryptography proved to be an even greater liability
because sender and receiver often never met or even knew each other. Public key cryptography uses two keys,
one public and one private. The private key never has to leave the owner, negating the high risk of transporting
keys to each document recipient. The public key can be made public so everyone can have access to it by simply
downloading it from the Internet. The risk of safeguarding a highly secret key during distribution to users
disappears, making public key cryptography ideally suited for the Internet, large distributed systems, and big
corporate networks.

Caesar Cipher in C Program

#include <stdio.h>
#include <ctype.h>
#define MAXSIZE 1024
void encrypt(char*);
void decrypt(char*);
int menu();
int
main(void)
{
char c,
choice[2],
s[MAXSIZE];
while(1)
{
menu();
gets(choice);
if((choice[0]=='e')||(choice[0]=='E'))
{
puts("Input text to encrypt->");
gets(s);
encrypt(s);
}
else if((choice[0]=='d')||(choice[0]=='D'))
{
puts("Input text to decrypt->");
gets(s);
decrypt(s);
}
else
break;
}

return 0;
}
void encrypt(char*str)
{
int n=0;
char *p=str,
q[MAXSIZE];
while(*p)
{
if(islower(*p))
{
if((*p>='a')&&(*p<'x'))
q[n]=toupper(*p + (char)3);
else if(*p=='x')
q[n]='A';
else if(*p=='y')
q[n]='B';
else
q[n]='C';
}
else
{
q[n]=*p;
}
n++; p++;
}
q[n++]='\0';
puts(q);
}
void decrypt(char*str)
{
int n=0;
char *p=str,
q[MAXSIZE];
while(*p)
{
if(isupper(*p))
{
if((*p>='D')&&(*p<='Z'))
q[n]=tolower(*p - (char)3);
else if(*p=='A')
q[n]='x';
else if(*p=='B')
q[n]='y';
else
q[n]='z';
}
else
{
q[n]=*p;
}
n++; p++;
}

q[n++]='\0';
puts(q);
}
int menu()
{
puts("To encrypt, input e or E\n");
puts("To decrypt, input d or D\n");
puts("To exit, input any other letter\n");
puts("Your choice:->\n");
return 0;
}

ADVANTAGES OF CRYPTOGRAPHY
The biggest advantage of public key cryptography is the secure nature of the private key. In fact, it never needs
to be transmitted or revealed to anyone.
It enables the use of digital certificates and digital timestamps, which is a very secure technique of signature
authorization.

DISADVANTAGES OF CRYPTOGRAPHY
Transmission time for documents encrypted using public key cryptography is significantly slower then
symmetric cryptography. In fact, transmission of very large documents is prohibitive.
The key sizes must be significantly larger than symmetric cryptography to achieve the same level of protection.
Public key cryptography is susceptible to impersonation attacks.

APPLICATIONS OF CRYPTOGRAPHY
As the Internet and other forms of electronic communication become more prevalent, electronic security is
becoming increasingly important. Cryptography is used to protect e-mail messages, credit card information, and
corporate data etc.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
There are two areas that show promise in the field of cryptography: Quantum Cryptography and DNA
cryptography. Quantum cryptography attempts to achieve the same security of information as other forms of
cryptography but through the use of photons, or packets of light. The process, though still in experimental stages,
makes use of the polarization nature of light and is proving to be a very promising defense against
eavesdropping.
DNA cryptography makes use of specially selected DNA strands whose combination results to a specific solution
to a problem. Still in its infancy, DNA cryptography looks promising.

REFERENCE
1. Stein, Lincoln D., Web Security, New York: New York Addison-Wesley, 1988
2. McGraw, Gary, Felten, Edward F, Securing Java, New York: New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1999
3. Feghhi, Jalal, Feghhi, Jalil, Williams, Peter, Digital Certificates, Addison Wesley Longman, Inc.,1999
4. Christoyannis, Costas, http://www.hack.gr/users/dij/crypto/
5. SSH Communications Security, http://www.ssh.fi/tech/crypto/intro.html#algorithms