Classical Encryption Techniques

Dr. Rajkumar Tekchandani

Assistant Professor | CSED

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 Classical Substitution Ciphers
• Where letters of plaintext are replaced by other letters or by numbers or symbols

• or if plaintext is viewed as a sequence of bits, then substitution involves replacing

plaintext bit patterns with ciphertext bit patterns

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 Caesar Cipher
• Earliest known substitution cipher by Julius Caesar

• First attested use in military affairs

• Replaces each letter by 3rd letter on

• Example:
meet me after the toga party
PHHW PH DIWHU WKH WRJD SDUWB

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 Caesar Cipher continued..
• Can define transformation as:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
DEFGHI J KLM NOPQRSTUVWXYZABC

• Mathematically give each letter a number

abcdefghij k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

• Then we have a Caesar cipher as:

c = E(p) = (p + k) mod (26)
p = D(c) = (c – k) mod (26)

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 Cryptanalysis of Caesar Cipher
• Only have 26 possible ciphers
– A maps to A,B,..Z
• Could simply try each in turn
• A brute force search
• Given ciphertext, just try all shifts of letters
• Do need to recognize when have plaintext
• eg. break ciphertext "GCUA VQ DTGCM"

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 Monoalphabetic Cipher
• Rather than just shifting the alphabet we could shuffle (jumble) the letters arbitrarily

• Each plaintext letter maps to a different random ciphertext letter

• Hence key is 26 letters long

Plain: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Cipher: DKVQFIBJWPESCXHTMYAUOLRGZN

Plaintext: ifwewishtoreplaceletters
Ciphertext: WIRFRWAJUHYFTSDVFSFUUFYA

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 Monoalphabetic Cipher Security
• Now we have a total of 26! = 4 x 1026 keys
• With so many keys, might think is secure but would be !!!WRONG!!!
• The problem is language characteristics

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 Language Redundancy and Cryptanalysis
• Human languages are redundant
• eg "th lrd s m shphrd shll nt wnt"
• Letters are not equally commonly used
• In English E is by far the most common letter
– followed by T,R,N,I,O,A,S
• Other letters like Z,J,K,Q,X are fairly rare
• Have tables of single, double & triple letter frequencies for various languages

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English Letter Frequencies

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 Use in Cryptanalysis
• key concept - monoalphabetic substitution ciphers do not change
relative letter frequencies
• discovered by Arabian scientists in 9th century
• calculate letter frequencies for ciphertext
• compare counts/plots against known values
• if caesar cipher look for common peaks/troughs
– peaks at: A-E-I triple, NO pair, RST triple
– troughs at: JK, X-Z
• for monoalphabetic must identify each letter
– tables of common double/triple letters help

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 Polyalphabetic Ciphers
• Polyalphabetic substitution ciphers
• Improve security using multiple cipher alphabets
• Make cryptanalysis harder with more alphabets to guess and flatter frequency
distribution
• Use a key to select which alphabet is used for each letter of the message
• Use each alphabet in turn
• Repeat from start after end of key is reached

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 Playfair Cipher

Dr. Rajkumar Tekchandani

Assistant Professor | CSED

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 Playfair Cipher
• Not even the large number of keys in a monoalphabetic cipher provides security

• One approach to improve security was to encrypt multiple letters

• The Playfair Cipher is an example invented by Charles Wheatstone in 1854, but

named after his friend Baron Playfair

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 Playfair Key Matrix
• A 5X5 population matrix of letters based on a keyword.

• Fill in letters of keyword (Eliminates duplicates)

• Fill rest of matrix with other letters

• eg. using the keyword MONARCHY

M O N A R
C H Y B D
E F G I/J K
L P Q S T
U V W X Z

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 Encrypting and Decrypting a playfair cipher
Plaintext is encrypted using two letters at a time
1. If a pair is a repeated letter, insert filler like 'X’, [balloon→ba lx
lo on] | OR if pair is not complete.

2. If both letters fall in the same row, replace each with letter to
right (wrapping back to start from end) [AR→RM] M O N A R
C H Y B D
3. If both letters fall in the same column, replace each with the
letter below it (again wrapping to top from bottom) [PV→VO] E F G I/J K
L P Q S T
4. Replacement with diagonally opposite letter, if pair falls in U V W X Z
different row or column. Note: Order must be preserved.
[OY→NH, BZ→DX]

5. Decryption is just reverse of this.

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 Security of Playfair Cipher
• Security much improved over monoalphabetic

• Since have 26 x 26 = 676 digrams

• Would need a 676 entry frequency table to analyse (verses 26 for a monoalphabetic)

• Was widely used for many years

– eg. by US & British military in WW1

• It can be broken, given a few hundred letters

• Since still has much of plaintext structure

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 Hill Cipher

Dr. Rajkumar Tekchandani

Assistant Professor | CSED

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Hill Cipher [PK mod 26]

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Encryption [E (P,K)]

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 Hill Cipher Decryption

Dr. Rajkumar Tekchandani

Assistant Professor | CSED
Cryptography & Network Security | Ethical
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Decryption of Hill Cipher [D(K,C)]

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 Vigenère Cipher
• simplest polyalphabetic substitution cipher
• effectively multiple caesar ciphers
• key is multiple letters long K = k1 k2 ... kd
• ith letter specifies ith alphabet to use
• use each alphabet in turn
• repeat from start after d letters in message
• decryption simply works in reverse

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 Process of Vigenere Cipher
The sender and the receiver decide on a key. Say ‘point’ is the key. Numeric representation of this key is
‘16 15 9 14 20’.

The sender wants to encrypt the message, say ‘attack from south east’. He will arrange plaintext and
numeric key as follows −

He now shifts each plaintext alphabet by the number written below it to create ciphertext as shown below

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 Security of Vigenère Ciphers
• Have multiple ciphertext letters for each plaintext letter

• Hence letter frequencies are obscured but not totally lost.

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 One-Time Pad
• if a truly random key as long as the message is used, the cipher will be secure
• called a One-Time pad
• is unbreakable since ciphertext bears no statistical relationship to the plaintext
• since for any plaintext & any ciphertext there exists a key mapping one to other
• can only use the key once though
• problems in generation & safe distribution of key

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 Transposition ciphers

Dr. Rajkumar Tekchandani

Assistant Professor | CSED

Cryptography & Network Security | Ethical

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 Transposition Ciphers
• Now consider classical transposition or permutation ciphers

• These hide the message by rearranging the letter order without altering the actual
letters used

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 Rail Fence cipher
• Write message letters out diagonally over a number of rows
• Then read off cipher row by row
• eg. write message out as:

M E M A T R H P R Y
E T E F E T E A T

me ma t r h pry
e t e f e t e at

• Giving ciphertext
me ma t r h prye t e f e t e at

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 Row Transposition Ciphers
• A more complex transposition
• Write letters of message out in rows over a specified number of columns
• Then reorder the columns according to some key before reading off the rows

Key: 3421567

Plaintext: a t t a c k p
ostpone
duntilt
woamxyz

Ciphertext: TTNAAPTMTSUOAODWCOIXKNLYPETZ

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 Product Ciphers
• Ciphers using substitutions or transpositions are not secure because of language
characteristics

• Hence we consider using several ciphers in succession to make harder, but:

– two substitutions make a more complex substitution
– two transpositions make more complex transposition
– but a substitution followed by a transposition makes a new much harder cipher
–
• This is bridge from classical to modern ciphers [Fiestal Cipher]

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 Summary
• We have considered:

– Classical cipher techniques and terminology

– Monoalphabetic substitution ciphers
– Cryptanalysis using letter frequencies
– Playfair cipher
– Hill cipher
– Polyalphabetic ciphers
– Transposition ciphers
– Product ciphers

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