Department of Computer Science
CS 551: Security and Privacy on the Internet
evans@virginia.edu
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CS551: Security and Privacy on the Internet, Fall 2000 |
Manifest: Monday 11 September 2000 and Wednesday 13 September
Assignments Due Beginning of class today Problem Set 1 Monday, 18 September Projects Preliminary Proposal
Readings Read before 13 September:
Read before 18 September: Stallings, Chapter 6
- Stallings, Chapter 4.3 and 4.4: Blowfish and RC5 (you don't need to read about the other block ciphers)
- Bruce Schneier, John Kelsey, et. al., The Twofish Team's Final Comments on AES Selection. Twofish, based on Blowfish, is one of the five finalist candidates to replace DES.
- Ron Rivest, et. al., The RC6 Block Cipher. RC6 is an AES finalist based on RC5. You may skip sections 3 and 4.
Questions September 11:
September 13:
- What are vulnerabilities in the DES key schedule?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of different block cipher modes of operation: Codebook, Cipher Block Chaining, Cipher Feedback, Output Feedback?
- How does a meet-in-the-middle attack work?
- How secure is Triple DES?
- What are side channel attacks?
- What is AES? How has the state of cryptology changes since the DES Program?
- What are the characteristics of a modern block cipher?
- What are the criteria for choosing a good block cipher?
- How do RC5 and RC6 work?
- How do Blowfish and Twofish work?
The only way to get the NSA to admit to the ability to break a given algorithm is to encrypt something so valuable that its public dissemination is worth the admission. Or, better yet, create a really funny joke and send it via encrypted e-mail to shady characters in shadowy countries. NSA employees are people, too; I doubt even they can keep a good joke secret.
Bruce Schneier (lead designer of Blowfish and Twofish), Applied Cryptography.
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University of Virginia Department of Computer Science CS 551: Security and Privacy on the Internet |
David Evans evans@virginia.edu |