Simple Cipher Research Articles

A Novel Multiple Key Block Ciphering Mechanism with Reduced Computational Overhead

Cryptanalysis of symmetric key cryptography encourages large key size and complex operations to achieve message confidentiality. All these techniques pose computational overhead at both the sender & receiver ends. In this paper, we propose a simple yet powerful Block Cipher Multiple Key Symmetric Encryption (BCMKSE) algorithm for achieving both confidentiality & integrity with reduced computational and message overheads. Our algorithm changes the key after encrypting/decrypting a piece of the whole message. While the key changes during the whole message encryption/decryption process without increasing network traffic or message overhead. This methodology becomes faster as it uses the simplest operations like shift, XOR, addition and comparison operations.

Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

Ever since humans started talking, we have been trying to work out a way of communicating information to one person, while keeping it secret from everyone else. Certainly, when you start to look at encryption methods, you are introduced to the ‘Caesar’ Cypher. which shows how old encryption is and how simple old ciphers now are for us to break.

A Simple Cipher Governs DNA Recognition by TAL Effectors

TAL effectors of plant pathogenic bacteria in the genus Xanthomonas bind host DNA and activate genes that contribute to disease or turn on defense. Target specificity depends on an effector-variable number of typically 34 amino acid repeats, but the mechanism of recognition is not understood. We show that a repeat-variable pair of residues specifies the nucleotides in the target site, one pair to one nucleotide, with no apparent context dependence. Our finding represents a previously unknown mechanism for protein-DNA recognition that explains TAL effector specificity, enables target site prediction, and opens prospects for use of TAL effectors in research and biotechnology.

Cryptanalysis of Block Ciphers via Improvised Particle Swarm Optimization and Extended Simulated Annealing Techniques

Optimization heuristics have been pursued in recent years as a viable approach in cryptanalysis. Even in simple ciphers where brute force method is successful, use of these techniques demonstrates their potential application in at- tacks of complex ciphers. This paper establishes the applicability of a couple of optimization heuristics to cryptanalysis studies; one based on thermostatistical persistency applied to simulated annealing and the other one based on particle swarm principle. Though both methods lead to successful attacks, our improvised version of group swarm optimization yields better performance. As a vehicle of demonstration of our concept, we choose simple yet representative block ciphers such as computationally tractable versions of DES, for our studies.

Attacks of simple block ciphers via efficient heuristics

Recent years have witnessed a significantly increased interest in computer security. Efforts in the area of design of ciphers and their attacks have progressed at almost competing rates. Though brute force attack is successful for simple ciphers, cryptanalysis of complex ciphers warrants specialised techniques and powerful computing systems. Several heuristic techniques have assumed significance over the past few years, in the context of attacks of simple stages of certain ciphers. This paper presents a systematic study of efficient heuristics in the successful attacks of some block ciphers which though simple are representative ones in computer security parlance.

Application of Synchronous Dynamic Encryption System (SDES) in Wireless Sensor Networks

Inherent to the wireless sensor networks are the two major problems of the broadcasting vulnerability, the limited computational capability and power budget. Even though security is a must in most applications, current sophisticated security protocols are not amenable to the primitiveness of the sensors. In this paper, we introduce a novel security protocol for wireless network of sensors that is very secure, yet simple and efficient. At the core of our security protocol is a simple and fast stream cipher cryptosystem that utilizes permutation vectors as encryption keys, forcing an intruder to a brute-force time complexity of Ω(2^n). In addition, our mechanism alleviates the effect of sensor capture, via its synchronized re-keying feature. In addition to the encryption efficiency, our system utilizes the group deployment of newly joining sensors for sensors power budgeting considerations. Experimental results show very promising future of our system in the wireless networks domain, excelling over other peers of modern cryptosystems (AES, DES, TripleDES), especially in the power budget arena.

Introduction to Cryptography

This module introduces the concept of cryptography, from the simple Shift Cipher to the more complex Public-Key Cryptography. User will be introduced to some simple classic cryptographic algorithms.

What writing is

Writing bears an uncertain relation to speech. Either it is treated as a largely autonomous medium of communication or it is treated as a simple adjunct, cipher, image or record of speech. This paper offers a compromise arguing that writing exploits a special and distinctive property of speech, namely, that of quotation. Quotation suspends the contextual, deictic, and illocutionary features of ordinary speech to create a quasi-autonomous linguistic form to which normal referential and intentional features of speech no longer apply. Written documents, it is argued, are distinctive in possessing just those properties characteristic of quotation. Evidence from studies of the metalinguistic effects of learning to read and write is used to evaluate this hypothesis.

A biological basis for writing and reading

As Alvin Liberman taught us many years ago, speech is a complex acoustic code on the phonological units of its message, but writing is a simple cipher on that message. Yet we learn to speak more readily than we learn to read and write—a fact central to Liberman’s biological view of speed. Must there not, however, also be a biology of writing and reading? Why is writing possible at all? What property enables language, alone among systems of animal communication, to be transduced into an alternative, but no less efficient, perceptuomotor modality? The outline of an answer emerges when we recall that writing systems, like speech itself, represent not meaning, but the intrinsically meaningless units, whether syllables or phonemes, on which the hierarchy of language is raised. Such units lend themselves to transduction not only because they have no meaning, but also because, as vehicles of communicative ‘‘parity’’ between speakers and listeners, they are neither sensory nor motor but cognitive and abstract. The nature and origin of these particulate entities at the base of language was the topic of a paper that Liberman and I were planning at the time of his death. The paper was to have been called ‘‘A Biological Basis for Writing and Reading.’’

AN UNIDENTIFIED CIPHER DEVICE

ABSTRACT A description of a simple cipher device, similar in some ways to Wheatstone's Cryptograph.

A structured symmetric-key block cipher

This paper presents a simple and structured symmetric-key block cipher called CHAIN which provides for variation in the block size, the key size, and the number of rounds of ciphering. This cipher performs encryption in three stages: mixing, permutation, and key-dependent substitution using the simple operations of XOR, table lookup, and substitution. The structure of CHAIN is byte-oriented, however the algorithm is designed in such a way that it can be expressed in a simple ‘compact form’ for efficient software or hardware implementation on platforms that support word sizes greater than 8 bits (such as on Intel's Pentium processor). Our C implementation of CHAIN with a 128-bit block size runs at 26 Mbits/Sec on a Pentium Pro 200 Mhz machine which is about 86% faster than RC5. Cryptanalysis of the algorithm indicates that it is very strong against the known attacks. It reaches the avalanche effect quite rapidly and provides very good resistance against linear and differential attacks.

Providing secure, recoverable e-mail

While most of the attention lately has been focused on the political aspects of cryptography, some attention has been paid to he mechanisms required for the implementation of such a scheme. To encrypt is simple, numerous means exist from simple ciphers to complex algorithms thought to require thousands of years to break. Concerns have been raised, primarily by law enforcement agencies, that widespread use of strong crypto will make their jobs more difficult. My feeling is that ultimately strong crypto will be used and that will lower the demands on law enforcement, not increase them.

A FAST METHOD FOR CRYPTANALYSIS OF SUBSTITUTION CIPHERS

It is possible to cryptanalyze simple substitution ciphers (both mono- and polyalphabetic) by using a fast algorithm based on a process where an initial key guess is refined through a number of iterations. In each step the plaintext corresponding to the current key is evaluated and the result used as a measure of how close we are in having discovered the correct key. It turns out that only knowledge of the digram distribution of the ciphertext and the expected digram distribution of the plaintext is necessary to solve the cipher. The algorithm needs to compute the distribution matrix only once and subsequent plaintext evaluation is done by manipulating this matrix only, and not by decrypting the ciphertext and reparsing the resulting plaintext in every iteration. The paper explains the algorithm and it shows some of the results obtained with an implementation in Pascal. A generalized version of the algorithm can be used for attacking other simple ciphers as well.

Soil horizon designations; past use and future prospects

Summary Approaches to the labelling of soil horizons have been ambivalent throughout the last one hundred years of soil science. Evidence from the literature appears to point to their introduction by Dokuchaev simply to list the observed horizons in his descriptions of geological sections or soils. Subsequently, some soil scientists attached a genetic meaning to these simple ciphers which involved unproven assumptions about the process of soil formation. Subsequently, others preferred to rely upon the observable and measurable characters of the soil horizon to reach an acceptable designation. A third group of scientists have rejected their use altogether and have suggested various alternatives. This paper briefly reviews the history of soil horizon designation use and, in an attempt to promote discussion, presents some possible future developments in the nature and use of these widely used symbols.

A TRIGRAPH CIPHER WITH A SHORT KEY FOR HAND USE

The cipher presented here is trigraphic, because triples of letters are mapped into triples of letters, and it is truly tri-graphic because all three letters of the triple are treated in the same fashion. The key consists of a square or rectangular array of letters (like that used for the Playfair), which must have an odd number of rows and an odd number of columns. The cipher is a very simple algebraic cipher, but it is suitable for hand ciphering and deciphering. It is believed to be almost as easy to use as a Play-fair or Delastelle, and possibly more secure against cryptanalysis.

Basic research in speech and lateralization of language: Some implications for reading disability

Basic research in speech and the lateralization of language is shown to illuminate the problems of reading and some of its disabilities. First, it is pointed out how speech, or language for the ear, differs markedly from reading, or language for the eye. Though the sounds of speech are a very complex code and the optical shapes of written language are a simple cipher or alphabet on the phonemes, we all perceive speech easily but read only with difficulty. Perceiving speech is easy because, as members of the human race, we all have access to a special physiological apparatus that decodes the complex speech signal and recovers the segmentation of the linguistic message. Reading is hard because the phonemic segmentation, which is automatic and intuitive in the case of speech, must be made fully conscious and explicit. The syllabic method supplemented by phonics (used with certain reservations) is suggested for remediation of segmentation problems. Second, it is posited that since the sounds of speech are processed differently from non-speech sounds, the two should not be diagnosed and remediated interchangeably. Third, it is shown that the relationships among cerebral lateralization for language, handedness and poor reading can now be studied more meaningfully because of the recent development of new techniques. A truism often heard in the opening lecture of graduate classes in education is that we have few answers to the problems that beset us, only questions. In the field of reading, the difficulty may be owing at least in part to our impatient attempts to find immediate solutions for the teacher and the student in the classroom, and our consequent neglect of basic research. I should like to suggest today how knowledge of basic research in related disciplines may lead to clues for improving beginning reading instruction and the lot of the disabled reader—if only by affording us a deeper understanding of the reading process.