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Cryptanalysis of RSA Factorization - Library(ISI Kolkata) - Indian ...

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Chapter 1: Introduction 4<br />

there is a simple transformation between them. These type <strong>of</strong> cryptosystems are<br />

also called ‘secret key’ cryptosystems, as the keys are kept hidden from unauthorized<br />

users.<br />

There are two major types <strong>of</strong> symmetric key cryptosystems, namely Block<br />

Ciphers and Stream Ciphers. We can broadly characterize them as follows.<br />

Block Ciphers. The goal <strong>of</strong> block ciphers is to scramble the plaintext block-byblock<br />

using the basic tools <strong>of</strong> confusion and diffusion applied to the plaintext<br />

over multiple rounds. A generic setup for a block cipher would use complex<br />

substitution and permutation rounds on the plaintext block, using a secret<br />

key, to create the effect <strong>of</strong> confusion and diffusion.<br />

Stream Ciphers. On the other hand, the inherent goal <strong>of</strong> a stream cipher is<br />

to generate a pseudo-random stream <strong>of</strong> data using a randomly chosen key<br />

<strong>of</strong> fixed (preferably short) length. After the generation <strong>of</strong> such a pseudorandom<br />

stream, the plaintext is simply XOR-ed with the stream to obtain<br />

the ciphertext.<br />

One may say that the security <strong>of</strong> a block cipher depends upon the amount <strong>of</strong> confusion<br />

and diffusion created over rounds, whereas that <strong>of</strong> a stream cipher depends<br />

upon the indistinguishability <strong>of</strong> its output stream from an actual random stream<br />

<strong>of</strong> bytes. The reader may refer to [126] for further details.<br />

One <strong>of</strong> the most well known Block Ciphers at present is the Advanced Encryption<br />

Standard (AES) [1]. Before this, the Data Encryption Standard (DES) [32]<br />

was the most popular one. RC4 [108], SNOW [34], TURING [111] etc. are some<br />

<strong>of</strong> the popular stream ciphers. One may refer to the eStream project [39] for recent<br />

developments in the area <strong>of</strong> stream cipher design. Although symmetric key<br />

cryptosystems are very fast in practice, there are few drawbacks, as follows.<br />

Key distribution problem: A secure and authenticated secret channel should be<br />

needed to distribute the secret keys beforehand.<br />

Key management problem: In a network <strong>of</strong> n users, every pair <strong>of</strong> users must share<br />

a secret key, for a total <strong>of</strong> ( )<br />

n<br />

2 =<br />

n(n−1)<br />

keys. If n is large, then the number<br />

2<br />

<strong>of</strong> keys becomes unmanageable.<br />

Signature problem: Consider the situation where Alice sends a message (encrypted/signed<br />

using some symmetric key cipher) to Bob, and later refuses

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