DEPARTMENT OF III MSC COMPUTER

TECHNOLOGY

NETWORK SECURITY (ECT062)

Two Mark Questions

1. What is cryptology?
Cryptology is the study of cryptography and cryptanalysis.

2. What is the difference between an unconditionally secure cipher and a computationally

secure cipher?
An unconditionally secure cipher is a scheme such that if the cipher text generated by the
scheme does not contain enough information to determine uniquely the corresponding plain text,
no matter how much cipher text is available.
A computationally secure scheme is such that the cost of breaking the cipher exceeds the
value of the encrypted information and the time required to break the cipher exceeds the useful
lifetime of the information.

3. Briefly define the Caesar cipher.

The Caesar cipher involves replacing each letter of the alphabet with the letter standing
three places further down the alphabet. For example:
Plain: meet me after the toga party
Cipher: PHHW PH DIWHU WKH WRJD SDUWB

4. Briefly define the mono alphabetic cipher?

A mono alphabetic cipher maps from a plain alphabet to cipher alphabet. Here a single
cipher alphabet is used per message.

5. Briefly define the play fair cipher.

The best-known multiple-letter encryption cipher is the play fair, which treats diagrams
in the plain text as single units and translates these units into cipher text diagrams.

6. What are the two problems with one-time pad?

1.It makes the problem of making large quantities of random keys.
2.It also makes the problem of key distribution and protection.
7. What is a transposition cipher?
Transposition cipher is a cipher, which is achieved by performing some sort of
permutation on the plaintext letters.
8. What are the two basic functions used in encryption algorithms?
The two basic functions used in encryption algorithms are
 Substitution
 Transposition

9. How many keys are required for two people to communicate via a cipher?
If both sender and receiver use the same key, the system is referred to as symmetric,
single key, secret key, or conventional encryption. If the sender and receiver each use a different
key, the system is referred to as asymmetric, two-key, or public-key encryption.

10. What is the difference between a block cipher and a stream cipher?
A block cipher processes the input one block of elements at a time, producing an output
block for each input block.
A stream cipher processes the input elements continuously, producing outp ut one
element at a time, as it goes along.

11. What are the two approaches to attacking a cipher ?

The two approaches to attack a cipher are:
 Cryptanalysis
 Brute-force attack

12. What is Steganography?

This conceals the existence of the message.

13. Why is it important to study feistel cipher?

This cipher can be used to approximate the simple substitution cipher by utilizing the
concept of a product cipher, which is the performing of two or more basic ciphers in sequence in
such a way that the final result or product is cryptographically stronger than any of the
component ciphers.
14. Why is it not practical to use an arbitrary reversible substitution cipher?
An arbitrary reversible cipher for a large block size is not practical, however, from an
implementation and performance point of view. Here the mapping itself is the key.

16. Which parameters and design choices determine the actual algorithm of a feistel
cipher?
 Block size
 Key size
 Number of rounds
 Sub key generation algorithm
 Round functions
  Fast software encryption or decryption
 Ease of analysis

17. What is the purpose of the S-boxes in DES?

Each row o f a S-box defines a general reversible substitution. It consists of a set of eight
S-boxes, each of which accepts 6 bits as input and produces 4 bits as output.

18. Explain the avalanche effect.

It is that a small change in either the plaintext or the key should produce a significant
change in the cipher text.
A change in one of the bit of the plaintext or one bit of the key should produce a change
in many bits of the cipher text.

19. What is the difference between a mono alphabetic cipher and a poly alphabetic cipher?
Mono alphabetic cipher: Here a single cipher alphabet is used.
Poly alphabetic cipher: Here a set of r elated mono alphabetic substitution rules is used.

20. List the types of cryptanalytic attacks.

 Cipher text only
 Known plaintext
 Chosen plaintext
 Chosen cipher text
 Chosen text

21. What are the essential ingredients of a symmetric cipher?

A symmetric cipher encryption has five in gredients. They are:
 Plaintext
 Encryption algorithm
 Secret key
 Cipher text
 Decryption algorithm

UNIT II

1. What is the purpose of the State array?

A single 128-bit block is depicted as a square matrix of bytes. This block is copied into
the State array, which is modified at each stage of encryption or decryption. After the final stage,
State is copied to an output matrix.
2. How is the S-box constructed?
The S-box is constructed in the following fashion:
Initialize the S-box with the byte values in ascending sequence row by row. The first row
contains {00}, {01}, {02}, ……….., {0F}; the second row contains {10},{11},etc; and so on.
Thus, the value of the byte at row x, column y is {x y}. Map each byte in the S-box to its
multiplicative inverse in the finite field GF (28); the value {00} is mapped to itself.
Consider that each byte in the S-box consists of 8 bits labeled
(b7,b6,b5,b4,b3,b2,b1,b0).Apply the following transformation to each bit of each byte in the S-
box.
3. Briefly describe Sub Bytes.
Sub byte uses an S-box to perform a byte-by-byte substitution of the block. The left most
4 bits of the byte are used as row value and the rightmost 4 bits are used as a column value.
These row and column values serve as indexes into the S-box to select a unique 8-bit value.

4. What is the difference between differential and linear cryptanalysis?

In differential cryptanalysis, it breaks the DES in less 255 complexities.
In cryptanalysis, it finds the DES key given 247 plaintexts.

5. Define product cipher.

Product cipher performs two or more basic ciphers in sequence in such a way that the
final result or product is cryptologically stronger than any of the component ciphers.

6. What was the original set of criteria used by NIST to evaluate candidate AES cipher?
The original set of criteria used by NIST to evaluate candidate AES cipher was:
Security, Memory Requirements, Actual Security, Algorithm And Implementation,
Randomness, Soundness, Flexibility, Hardware and software suitability, Cost, Simplicity,
Licensing Requirements, Computational Efficiency

7. What was the final set of criteria used by NIST to evaluate candidate AES ciphers?
The final set of criteria used by NIST to evaluate candidate AES ciphers was:
 General Security
 Software Implementations
 Restricted-Space Environments
 Hardware Implementations
 Attacks On Implementations
 Encryption vs. Decryption
 Key Agility
 Other Versatility And Flexibility
 Potential for Instruction-Level Parallelism
8. What is power analysis?
Power analysis is the power consumed by the smart card at an y particular time during the
cryptographic operation is related to the instruction being executed and to the data being
processed.
Eg) Multiplication consumes more power than addition and writing 1s consumes ore power than
writing 0s.

9. Briefly describe Shift Rows .

In shift row, a row shift moves an individual byte from one column to another, which is a
linear distance o f a multiple of 4 bytes. In Forward Shift Row, each row perform circular left
shift. Second Row a 1-byte circular left shift is performed. Third Row a 2-byte circular left shift
is performed. For the Fourth Row a 3-byte circular left shift is performed. In Inverse Shift Row,
each row perform circular right shift.

10. How many bytes in State are affected by Shift Rows?

Totally 6-bytes in state are affected b y Shift Rows.

11. Briefly describe Mix Columns.

Mix Column is substitution that makes use of arithmetic over GF(28).Mix Column operates
on each column individually. Each byte o f a column is mapped into a new value that is a
function of all four bytes in the column. The Mix Column Transformation combined with the
shift row transformation ensures that after a few rounds, all output bits depend on all input bits.

12. Briefly describe Add Round Key.

In Add Round Key, the 128 bits of State are bit wise XOR with the 128 b its of the round
key. The operation is viewed as a column wise operation between the 4 bytes of a State column
and one word of the round key; it can also be viewed as a byte-level operation. The Add Round
Key transformation is as simple as possible and affects ever y bit of State.

13. Briefly describe the Key Expansion Algorithm.

The AES key expansion algorithm takes as input a 4-word(16-byte) key an d produces a
linear array of 44 words(156 bytes). This is sufficient to provide a 4-word round key for the
initial Add Round Key stage and each of the 10 rounds of the cipher.

14. What is the difference between Sub Bytes and Sub Word?
Sub Bytes: Sub Bytes uses an S-box to perform a byte-by-byte substitution of the block. Sub
Word: Sub Word performs a byte substitution on each byte of its input word, using the S box.
15. What is the difference between Shift Rows and Rot Word?
Shift Rows: Shift Row is simple permutation. It shifts the rows circularly left or right.
Rot Word: Rot word performs a one-byte circular left shift on a word. This means that an input
word [b0,b1,b2,b3] is transformed into [b1,b2,b3,b0].

16. What is triple encryption?

Tuchman proposed a triple encryption method that uses only two keys [TUCH79]. The
function follows an encrypt – decrypt – encrypt (EDE) sequence.
C=Ek1 [Dk2 [Ek1 [P]]]
There is no cryptographic significance to the use of decryption for the second stage. Its only
advantage is that it allows users of 3DES to decrypt data encrypted b y users of the older single
DES:
C=Ek1 [Dk2 [Ek1 [P]]] = E k1 [P]

17. What is a meet-in-the-middle attack?

Meet-in-the-middle attack, was first described in [DIFF77]. It is based on the observation
that, if we have
C=Ek2[Ek1 [P]] Then
X=E k1 [P]=D k2 [C]
Given a known pair, (P,C), the attack proceeds as follows. First, encrypt P for all 256 possible
values of K 1 . Store these results in a table and then sort the table by the values of X. Next,
decrypt C using all 2 56 possible values of K 2 . As each decryption is produced, check the result
against the table for a match. If a match occurs, then test the two resulting keys against a new
known plaintext- cipher text pair. If the two keys produce the correct cipher text, accept them as
the correct keys.

18. How many keys are used in triple encryption?

Tuchman proposed a triple encryption method that uses only two keys .

19. What is the key size for Blowfish?

Blowfish makes use of a key that ranges from 32 bits to 448 bits (one to fourteen 32-bit
words). That key is used to generate 18 32-bit sub keys and four 8*32 S-boxes containing a total
of 1024 32-bit entries. The total is 1042 32-bit values, or 4168 bytes.

20. Why do some block cipher modes of operation only use encryption while others use
both encryption and decryption?

Some block cipher modes of operation only use encryption because the input is set to
some initialization vector and the leftmost bits of the output of the encryption function are XOR
with the first segment of plain text p1 to produce the first unit of cipher text C1 and it is
transmitted. While in decryption, the cipher text is XOR with the output of the encryption
function to produce the plain text.
 UNIT III

1. List important design considerations for a stream cipher.

The encryption sequence should have a large period. The key stream should approximate
the properties of a true random number stream as close as possible. The output of the
pseudorandom number generator is conditioned on the value of the input key.

2. Why is it not desirable to reuse a stream cipher key?

If two plaintexts are encrypted with the same key using a stream cipher then cryptanalysis
is often quite simple. If the two cipher text streams are XOR together the result is the XOR of the
original plaintexts. So it is not desirable to reuse a stream cipher key.

3. What primitive operations are used in Blowfish?

Blowfish uses two primitive operations:
 Addition
 Bit wise exclusive-OR

4. What common mathematical constants are used in RC5?

W : Word size in bits. RC5 encrypts 2-word blocks.
16,32,64
r: Number of rounds. 0,1,….,255
B Number of 8-bit bytes (octets) in the secret key K.
0,1,….,255

5. What primitive operations are used in RC5?

RC5 uses three primitive operations (and their inverse):
 Addition: Addition of words, denoted by +, is performed modulo 2
 Bitwise exclusive OR
 Left circular rotation

6. What primitive operation is used in RC4?

The primitive operation used in RC4 is bit wise Exclusive-OR (XOR) operation.

7. For a user workstations in a typical business environment, list potential locations for
confidentiality attacks.
 LANs in the same building that are interconnected with bridges and routers.
 Twisted pair and coaxial cable can be attacked using either invasive taps or inductive
devices that monitor electromagnetic emanation.
 In addition to the potential vulnerability of the various communications links, the various
processors along the path are themselves subject to attack.
8. What is the difference between link and end-to-end encryption?

Link Encryption End-to-end Encryption

Applied by sending host Applied by sending process

Transparent to user
User applies encryption

Host maintains encryption facility

One facility for all users User must determine algorithm

User selects encryption scheme

Can be done in hardware
Software implementation
All or no messages encrypted User chooses to encrypt, or not, for each
message

9. What types of information might be derived from a traffic analysis attack?

The following types of information can be derived from traffic analysis attack:
 Identities of partners
 How frequently the partners are communicating
 Message pattern, message length, or quantity of messages that suggest important
information is being exchanged
 The events that correlate with special conversations between particular partners.

10. What is traffic padding and what is its purpose?

Traffic padding produces cipher text output continuously, even in the absence of
plaintext. A continuous random data stream is generated. When plaintext is available, it is
encrypted and transmitted. When input plaintext is not present, random data are encrypted and
transmitted.

11. List ways in which secret keys can be distributed to two communicating parties.
 A can select a key and physically deliver it to B.
 A third party can select the key and physically deliver it o A and B
 If A and B have previously and recently used a key, one party can transmit the new key
to the other, encrypted using the old key
 If A and B each has an encrypted connection to a third party C, C can deliver a
key on the encrypted links to A and B
12. What is nonce?
Consider A issues a request to the KDC for a session key to protect a logical connection
to B. The message includes the identity of A and B and a unique identifier, N1 , for this
transaction, which we refer to as nonce. The nonce may be a timestamp, a counter, or a random
number.

13. What is key distribution center?

A key distribution center is responsible for distributing keys to pairs of users such as
hosts, processes, applications. Each user must share a unique key with the key distribution
center for purposes of key distribution.

14. What is the difference between statistical randomness and unpredictability?

In applications such as reciprocal authentication and session key generation the
requirement is not so much that the sequence of numbers be statistically random but that the
successive numbers of the sequence are unpredictable. With true random sequences each
number is statistically independent of other n umbers in the sequence and therefore
unpredictable.

15. What is the difference between Rijndael and AES?

AES was developed b y NIST .AES is a symmetric block cipher that is intended to
replace DES.NIST selected rijndael as the proposed AES algorithm. The two researchers who
developed and submitted Rijndael for the AES are the both cryptographers from
Belgium.

16. Why is the middle portion of 3DES a decryption rather than an encryption?
Decryption requires that the keys be applied in reverse order: P=Dk1 [Ek1 [P]]
This results in a dramatic increase in cryptographic strength. The use of DES results in a
mapping that is not equivalent to a single DES encryption.

17.What is the difference between the AES decryption algorithm and the equivalent
inverse cipher?
In AES decryption, we use inverse shift rows inverse sub bytes, add round key, inverse
mix columns. But in equivalent inverse cipher, we interchange inverse shift rows and inverse sub
bytes.

18. State fermat’ s theorem.

For a prime number p and appositive integer a
a= 1 mod p
19. What is session key?
Communication between end systems is encrypted using temporary key, often referred
to as a session key. The session key is used for the duration of a logical connection, such
as a frame relay connection or transport connection, and then discarded.

20. What is master key?

Session keys are transmitted in encrypted form, using master key that is shared by the
keys distribution center and an end system. For each end system or user, there is a unique master
key that it shares with the key distribution center. These master keys must be distributed in some
fashion.
Unit IV
1. Differentiate public key encryption and conventional encryption.

Conventional Encryption Public key Encryption

Same algorithm with key used for encryption Same algorithm is used for a pair of keys.
& decryption with encryption and decryption.
Sender & receiver have one of
Same algorithm with Sender & receiver must the matched pair keys.
share the algorithm and key the matched pair
keys. Any one of the key must be
kept secret.
Key must be kept secret.

2. Specify the application of public key cryptography.

 Encryption/Decryption.
 Digital signature.
 Key exchange.

3. Determine the gcd(24140,16762) using Euclid’s algorithm.

Soln:
We know, gcd (a,b)=gcd(b,a mod b)
gcd(24140,16762)=gcd(16762,7378)
gcd(7378,2006)=gcd(2006,1360)
gcd(1360,646)=gcd(646,68)
gcd(68,34)=34
gcd(24140,16762) = 34.
4.Perform encryption and decryption using RSA alg. For the following. P=7; q=11; e=17;
M=8.
Soln:
n=pq
n=7*11=77
ö(n)=(p-1) (q-1)
=6*10 = 60 e=17
d =27
C= Me mod n C =
817 mod 77 = 57
M = Cd mod n
= 5727 mod 77
= 8
5. User A & B exchange the key using Diff ie Hellman alg. Assume á=5 q=11 XA=2 XB=3.
Find YA, YB, K.
Soln:
YA = áXA mod q
=52 mod 11
=3
YB = áXB mod q
= 53 mod 11
= 4
KA = YBXA mod q
= 42 mod 11
= 5
KB = YAXB mod q
= 33 mod 11
= 5

6.What is message authentication?

It is a procedure that verifies whether the received message comes from assigned source
has not been altered.

7. Define the classes of message authentication function.

 Message encryption: The entire cipher text would be used for authentication.
 Message Authentication Code: It is a function of message and secret key produce a fixed
length value.
 Hash function: Some function that map a message of any length to fix ed length which
serves as authentication.
8. What you meant by MAC?

MAC is Message Authentication Code. It is a function of message and secret key which
produce a fixed length value called as MAC.

9. Specify the techniques for distribution of public key.

 Publicly available directory.
 Public key authority.
 Publickey certificate.
 Publickey announcement

10. Specify the requirements for message authentication.

 Disclosure.
 Traffic analysis.
 Masquerade.
 Content Modification.
 Sequence Modification.
 Timing modification.
 Repudiation.

11. Differentiate internal and external error control.

Internal error control:
In internal error control, an error detecting code also known as frame check sequence or
checksum.
External error control:
In external error control, error detecting codes are appended after encryption.

12. What you meant by hash function?

Hash function accept a variable size message M as input and produces a fixed size hash
code H(M) called as message digest as output. It is the variation on the message authentication
code.

13. Differentiate MAC and Hash function?

MAC: In Message Authentication Code, the secret key shared b y sender and receiver. The
MAC is appended to the message at the source at a time which the message is assumed or
known to be correct.
Hash Function: The hash value is appended to the message at the source at time when the
message is assumed or known to be correct. The hash function itself not considered to
be secret.
14.Define Kerberos.
Kerberos is an authentication service developed as part of project Athena at MIT. The
problem that Kerberos address is, assume an open distributed environment in which users at
work stations wish to access services on servers distributed throughout the network.

15.In the content of Kerberos, what is realm?

A full service Kerberos environment consisting of a Kerberos server, a no. of clients,
number of application server requires the following:
The Kerberos server must have user ID and hashed password of all participating users in its
database.
The Kerberos server must share a secret key with each server. Such an environment is referred
to as “Realm”.

17.Assume the client C wants to communicate server S using Kerberos procedure. How can
it be achieved?
a) C AS: [IDC|| PC || IDV] b) AS C:
Ticket
c) C V: [IDC || ADC || IDV] Ticket = EKV [IDC ||ADC || IDV]

18. Any three hash algorithm.

 MD5 (Message Digest version 5) algorithm.
 SHA_1 (Secure Hash Algorithm).
 RIPEMD_160 algorithm.

19. Specify the four categories of security threats

 Interruption
 Interception
 Modification
 Fabrication

20. Differentiate symmetric and Asymmetric Encryption

Symmetric Encryption:
Sender and receiver use the same key.
Asymmetric:
Sender and receiver uses different key.
 Unit V
1. What are the services provided by PGP services
 Digital signature
 Message encryption
 Compression
 E-mail compatibility
 Segmentation

2. Explain the reasons for using PGP?

a) It is available free worldwide in versions that run on a variety of platforms, including
DOS/windows, UNIX, Macintosh and many more.
b) It is based on algorithms that have survived extensive public review and are considered
extremely secure.
E.g.) RSA, DSS and Diffie-Hellman for public key encryption, CAST-128, IDEA,
3DES for conventional encryption, SHA-1for hash coding.
c) It has a wide range of applicability from corporations that wish to select and enforce a
standardized scheme for encrypting files and communication.
d) It was not developed by nor is it controlled by any governmental or standards organization.

3. Why E-mail compatibility function in PGP needed?

Electronic mail systems only permit the use of blocks consisting of ASCII text. To
accommodate this restriction PGP provides the service converting the row 8-bit binary stream to
a stream of printable ASCII characters. The scheme used for this purpose is Radix-64
conversion.

4. Name any cryptographic keys used in PGP?

 One-time session conventional keys.
 Public keys.
 Private keys.
 Pass phrase based conventional keys.

5. Define key Identifier?

PGP assigns a key ID to each public key that is very high probability unique with a user
ID. It is also required for the PGP digital signature. The key ID associated with each public key
consists of its least significant 64bits.

6. List the limitations of SMTP/RFC 822?

 SMTP cannot transmit executable files or binary objects.
 It cannot transmit text data containing national language characters.
 SMTP servers may reject mail message over certain size.
  SMTP gateways cause problems while transmitting ASCII and EBCDIC.
 SMTP gateways to X.400 E-mail network cannot handle non textual data included in
X.400 messages.

7. Define S/MIME?
Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension(S/MIME) is a security enhancement to the
MIME Internet E-mail format standard, based on technology from RSA Data Security.

8. What are the elements of MIME?

 Five new message header fields are defined which may be included in an RFC 822
header.
 A number of content formats are defined.
 Transfer encodings are defined that enable the conversion of an y content format into a
form that is protected from alteration by the mail system.

9. What are the headers fields define in MME?

 MIME version.
 Content type.
 Content transfer encoding.
 Content id.
 Content description.

10.What are the key algorithms used in S/MIME?

 Digital signature standards.
 Diffie Hellman.
 RSA algorithm.

11. What you mean by versioned certificate?

Mostly used issue X.509 certificate with the product name” versioned digital id”. Each
digital id contains owner’s public key, owner’s name and serial number of the digital id.

12. What are the function areas of IP security?

 Authentication
 Confidentiality
 Key management.

13. Give the application of IP security?

 Provide secure communication across private & public LAN.
 Secure remote access over the Internet.
 Secure communication to other organization.
14. Give the benefits of IP security?
 Provide security when IP security implement in router or firewall.
 IP security is below the transport layer is transparent to the application.
 IP security transparent to end-user.
 IP security can provide security for individual user.

15. What are the protocols used to provide IP security?

 Authentication header (AH) protocol.
 Encapsulatin g Security Payload(ESP).

15. Specify the IP security services?

 Access control.
 Connectionless interpretty.
 Data origin authentication
 Rejection of replayed packet.
 Confidentiality.
 Limited traffic for Confidentiality.

17. What do you mean by Security Association? Specify the parameters that identifies the
Security Association?
 An association is a one-way relationship between a sender and receiver that affords
security services to the traffic carried on.
 A key concept that appears in both the authentication and confidentiality mechanism for
IP is the security association (SA).
 A security Association is uniquely identified by 3 parameters:
 Security Parameter Index (SPI).
 IP Destination Address.
 Security Protocol Identifier.

18. What does you mean by Reply Attack?

 A replay attack is one in which an attacker obtains a copy of an authenticated packet and
later transmits it to the intended destination.
 Each time a packet is send the sequence number is incremented .

19. Explain man in the middle attack?

If A and B exchange message, means E intercept the message and receive the B’s public
key and b’s user Id, E sends its own message with its own public key and b’s user ID based on
the private key and Y.B compute the secret key and A compute k2 based on private key of A and
Y
20. Steps involved in SSL required protocol?
 SSL record protocol takes application data as input and fragments it.
 Apply lossless Compression algorithm.
 Compute MAC for compressed data.

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