Tuesday, August 17, 2010

UNIT-I
1. What are the essential ingredients of a symmetric cipher?
A symmetric cipher encryption has five ingredients. They are:
 Plaintext
 Encryption algorithm
 Secret key
 Cipher text
 Decryption algorithm
2. What are the two basic functions used in encryption algorithms?
The two basic functions used in encryption algorithms are
 Substitution
 Transposition
3. 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.
4. 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 output one element
at a time, as it goes along.
5. What are the two approaches to attacking a cipher?
The two approaches to attack a cipher are:
 Cryptanalysis
 Brute-force attack
6. 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.
7. 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
8. Briefly define the monoalphabetic cipher?
A monoalphabetic cipher maps from a plain alphabet to cipher alphabet. Here a single
cipher alphabet is used per message.
9. Briefly define the playfair cipher.
The best-known multiple-letter encryption cipher is the playfair, which treats diagrams in
the plain text as single units and translates these units into cipher text diagrams.
10. 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.
11. What is a transposition cipher?
Transposition cipher is a cipher, which is achieved by performing some sort of
permutation on the plaintext letters.
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.
15. What is the difference between diffusion and confusion?
In diffusion, the statistical structure of the plain text is dissipated into long-range statistics
of the cipher text. This is achieved by permutation.
In confusion, the relationship between the statistics of the cipher text and the value of the
encryption key is made complex. It is achieved by substitution.
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 of 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 related 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
UNIT II
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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
 Actual Security
 Randomness
 Soundness
 Other security factors
 Cost
 Licensing Requirements
 Computational Efficiency
 Memory Requirements
 Algorithm And Implementation Characteristics
 Flexibility
 Hardware and software suitability
 Simplicity
4. 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
5. What is power analysis?
Power analysis is the power consumed by the smart card at any 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
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 of 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 by 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 of 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 XORed with the 128 bits 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 every
bit of State.
13. Briefly describe the Key Expansion Algorithm.
The AES key expansion algorithm takes as input a 4-word(16-byte) key and 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 Sbox.
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. 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 XORed 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 XORed with the output of
the encryption function to produce the plain text.
17. 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 by
users of the older single DES:
C=Ek1[Dk2[Ek1[P]]] = Ek1[P]
18. 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=Ek1[P]=Dk2[C]
Given a known pair, (P,C), the attack proceeds as follows. First, encrypt P for all
256 possible values of K1. Store these results in a table and then sort the table by the
values of X. Next, decrypt C using all 256 possible values of K2. 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-ciphertext pair. If the two keys produce
the correct ciphertext, accept them as the correct keys.
19. How many keys are used in triple encryption?
Tuchman proposed a triple encryption method that uses only two keys [TUCH79].
20. 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 subkeys and four 8*32 S-boxes
containing a total of 1024 32-bit entries. The total is 1042 32-bit values, or 4168 bytes.
UNIT III
1. What primitive operations are used in Blowfish?
Blowfish uses two primitive operations:
• Addition: Addition of words, denoted by +, is performed modulo 232.
• Bit wise exclusive-OR: This operation is denoted by Å.
2. 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
3. What primitive operations are used in RC5?
RC5 uses three primitive operations (and their inverse):
• Addition: Addition of words, denoted by +, is performed modulo 2w. The inverse
operation, denoted by -, is subtraction modulo 2w.
• Bitwise exclusive-OR: This operation is denoted by “Å”.
• Left cicular rotation: The cyclic rotation of word x left by y bits is denoted by
x<<x>>>y.
4. List important design considerations for a stream cipher.
The encyption sequence should have a large period. The keystream 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.
5. 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 ciphertext streams are XORed together the
result is the XOR of the original plaintexts. So it is not desirable to reuse a stream cipher
key.
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.
• The wiring closet itself is vulnerable.
• 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
Transparent to user
Host maintains encryption facility
One facility for all users
Can be done in hardware
All or no messages encrypted
Applied by sending process
User applies encryption
User must determine algorithm
User selects encryption scheme
Software implementation
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 ciphertext 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 the difference between a session key and a master key?
Session key
Master key
Communication between end systems is
encrypted using temporary key, often
referred to as a session key.
Session keys are transmitted in encrypted
form, using master key that is shared by the
keys distribution center and an end system.
The session key is used for the duration of
a logical connection, such as a frame relay
connection or transport connection, and
then discarded.
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.
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. 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 numbers in the sequence and therefore
unpredictable.
16. What is the difference between Rijndael and AES?
AES was developed by 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.
17. 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.
18. 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.
Unit IV
1. Differentiate public key encryption and conventional encryption.
Conventional Encryption Public key Encryption
1. Same algorithm with 1.Same algorithm is used for
same key used for encryption & decryption with
encryption and decryption. a pair of keys.
2. Sender & receiver must 2.Sender & receiver have one of
share the algorithm and key. the matched pair keys.
3. Key must be kept secret. 3. Any one of the 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 Diffie 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 fixed 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.
 Public announcement.
 Publicly available directory.
 Public key authority.
 Public key certificate.
10. Specify the requirements for message authentication.
i. Disclosure.
ii. Traffic analysis.
iii. Masquerade.
iv. Content Modification.
v. Sequence Modification.
vi. Timing modification.
vii. 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 by 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, no.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?
a) One-time session conventional keys.
b) Public keys.
c) Private keys.
d) 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?
a) SMTP cannot transmit executable files or binary objects.
b) It cannot transmit text data containing national language characters.
c) SMTP servers may reject mail message over certain size.
d) SMTP gateways cause problems while transmitting ASCII and EBCDIC.
e) 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 any 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 is MIME content type &explain?
It is used to declare general type of data. Subtype define particular format
for that type of the data. It has 7 content type & 15 subtypes. They are,
1. Text type
• Plain text.
• Enriched.
2. Multipart type
• Multipart/mixed.
• Multipart/parallel.
• Multipart/alternative.
• Multipart/digest.
3. Message type
• Message/RFC822.
• Message/partial.
• Message/external.
4. Image type
• JPEG.
• CIF.
5. Video type.
6. Audio type.
7. Application type
• Post script.
• Octet stream.
11.What are the key algorithms used in S/MIME?
• Digital signature standards.
• Diffi Hellman.
• RSA algorithm.
12. Give the steps for preparing envelope data MIME?
• Generate Ks.
• Encrypt Ks using recipient’s public key.
• RSA algorithm used for encryption.
• Prepare the ‘recipient info block’.
• Encrypt the message using Ks.
13. 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.
14. What are the function areas of IP security?
• Authentication
• Confidentiality
• Key management.
15. Give the application of IP security?
• Provide secure communication across private & public LAN.
• Secure remote access over the Internet.
• Secure communication to other organization.
16. 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.
17. What are the protocols used to provide IP security?
• Authentication header (AH) protocol.
• Encapsulating Security Payload(ESP).
18. Specify the IP security services?
• Access control.
• Connectionless interpretty.
• Data origin authentication
• Rejection of replayed packet.
• Confidentiality.
• Limited traffic for Confidentiality.
19. 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.
20. 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 .
21. 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 userId,E sends its own message with its own public key and
b’s userID based on the private key and Y.B compute the secret key and A compute k2
based on private key of A and Y
22. Steps involved in SS L required protocol?
1. SSL record protocol takes application data as input and fragments it.
2. Apply lossless Compression algorithm.
3. Compute MAC for compressed data.
4. MAC and compression message is encrypted using conventional alg.
23. What is mean by SET? What are the features of SET?
Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) is an open encryption and security
specification designed to protect credit card transaction on the internet.
Features are:
1. Confidentiality of information
2. Integrity of data
3. Cardholder account authentication
4. Merchant authentication
24. What are the steps involved in SET Transaction?
1. The customer opens an account
2. The customer receives a certificate
3. Merchants have their own certificate
4. The customer places an order.
5. The merchant is verified.
6. The order and payment are sent.
7. The merchant requests payment authorization.
8. The merchant confirm the order.
9. The merchant provides the goods or services.
10. The merchant requests payment.
25. What is dual signature? What it is purpose?
The purpose of the dual signature is to link two messages that intended for
two different recipients.
To avoid misplacement of orders
26. List the 3 classes of intruder?
Classes of Intruders
1) Masquerader
2) Misfeasor
3) Clandestine user
27. Define virus. Specify the types of viruses?
A virus is a program that can infect other program by modifying them the
modification includes a copy of the virus program, which can then go on to infect other
program.
Types:
1) Parasitic virus
2) Memory-resident virus
3) Boot sector virus
4) Stealth virus
5) Polymorphic virus
28. What is application level gateway?
An application level gateway also called a proxy server; act as a relay of
application-level traffic. The user contacts the gateway using a TCP\IP application,
such as Telnet or FTP, and the gateway asks the user for the name of the remote host to
be accessed.
29. List the design goals of firewalls?
1. All traffic from inside to outside, and vise versa, must pass through
the firewall.
2. Only authorized traffic, as defined by the local security policy, will
be allowed to pass.
3. The firewall itself is immune to penetration.
UNIT 1
1.Explain the OSI Architecture.
• Notes
• Diagram
• Illustration
2.Explain Classical Encryption Techniques.
 Symmetric Ciphers
 Caesar Cipher
 Mono alphabetic
 Poly alphabetic
3.Explain DES Algorithm.
• Notes
• Diagram
• Illustration
• Algorithm
4.Explain AES.
• Notes
• Diagram
• Illustration
• Algorithm
5.Describe about Traffic Confidentiality.
Cryptanalytic methods in traffic analysis and ciphers achieving
confidentiality.
UNIT 2
1.Explain about the various Key management techniques.
 public announcement
 Publicly available directory
 public-key authority
 public-key certificates
2.Describe Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange.
 Algorithm
 Illustration
 Notes
3.Explain RSA algorithm.
 Algorithm
 Illustration
 Diagram
 Notes
4.Describe Public Key Cryptography.
 Two Keys
 Private key
 public key
 distribution
5.Explain Elliptic Curve Architecture.
• Architecture
• Algebraic description
• Geometric description
UNIT 3
1.Explain Authentication Functions.
• Message Encryption
• MAC
• Hash function
2.Describe HMAC algorithm.
o Algorithm
o Diagram
o Notes
3.Describe RIPEMD-160.
 Algorithm
 Diagram
 Notes
4.Explain Hash Functions.
 Security features
 Algorithms used
 Illustration
5.Explain Digital Signature Standard.
• Algorithm
• Analysis
• Diagram
UNIT 4
1.Explain Kerberos.
 Algorithm
 Explanation
 Diagram
2.Explain X.509 Authentication Services.
o Algorithm
o Explanation
o Diagram
3.Describe Electronic Mail Security.
 Algorithm
 Explanation
 Diagram
4.Explain about PGP services.
 Algorithm
 Explanation
 Diagram
5.Describe S/MIME.
 Algorithm
 Explanation
 Diagram
UNIT 5
1.Explain Intrusion Detection.
 Audit records
 Statistical Anomaly Detection
 Rule Based Intrusion Detection
 Base-Rate Valley
 Distributed
 Honey pot
 Exchange format
2.State and Explain Password Management.
o Password Protection
o Password Selection Strategies
3.Explain the Firewall Design Principles.
 Firewall characteristics
 Types
 Firewall Configuration
4.Describe about Trusted Systems.
 Data Access Control
 Concept
 Trojan Horse Defense
5.Name some Viruses and Explain it.
 Malicious Programs
 Nature
 Types
 Macro viruses
 E-mail Viruses
 Worms

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Relaying to hide message origins

your email is valuable! .003$(hey tahts something) have an alternate set up to be the one you giveaway


old school spoofing has changed, you can no longer simply telnet to a mailserver and type in false informatino from the command line. though some old mail servers do allow this. what spammers do is they send a relay point false information, a relay is a server that serves as a middle man between the sender and sendee. this can be considered a form of a man in the middle attack. new servers do not send the mail unless the senders information matches the domain they are on. there are work arounds though because servers send mail for multiple domains. spammers have complicated software often written by the few used by the many, some of this spoofing software is even sponsered by top schools such as MIT.

Spammers don’t originate their messages on their own server. Even with fake
From: and Received: headers — which, like the breadcrumbs in the fairytale
Hansel and Gretel, are used to trace a message’s path back to its point of
origin — you’d still be able to trace those messages back to the spammer by
reading all the other Received: headers. And of course, spammers don’t
want you to do that.
To make it far more difficult for you to trace their messages, spammers relay
their messages through another system in a way that causes the message to
look like it originally came from the relaying system.
Older versions of sendmail supported a once-common method for reoriginating
mail — sending a message to a mail server that was not the
destination server, but an intermediate server. For example, you could initiate
an SMTP connection to elroy.somedomain.com and send it a message
that is being sent to george@otherdomain.com. The sendmail program
would happily accept and forward the message on to its final destination.
This is what is called relaying. With relaying, it is possible to re-originate a
message and completely hide the true origin of a message. (For some odd
reason, spammers don’t want people to be able to find them so easily.)
Today, most system admins will have upgraded their sendmail with a version
that no longer permits relaying: Newer versions of sendmail will only accept
messages intended for its own domain and no other by default.

You may be wondering how relaying differs from legitimate mail origination.
Well, when you or I send an e-mail message, we create it in an e-mail program
such as Outlook or Lotus Notes. In relaying, the program sending a mail
message to the SMTP server isn’t a program like Outlook, but a special program
used to originate spam. Basically, instead of actually typing e-mails,
this program connects to the relay server (a mail server with an older or
mis-configured version of sendmail that still permits relaying) and then
creates e-mails on that server. The program that spammers use need not
be complicated — it could be a simple script.
To illustrate how this works, Listing 3-2 shows an example I used in the 1990s
to demonstrate how easy it was to forge a completely genuine-looking mail
message. All it takes is telnet and a cursory understanding of the SMTP protocol.
In Listing 3-2, the commands that I typed to relay a message from the
Vatican to my friend John appear in bold.
Listing 3-2: Hiding a Message Origin with a Relay
% telnet mail.vatican.va 25
220 mail.vatican.va SMTP Sendmail 8.11.6/8.11.0 here
HELO
250 mail.vatican.va Hello wbar7.sea1-4-4-021-163.sea1.dslverizon.
net [4.4.21.163], I’m listening
MAIL From: pope@vatican.va
250 pope@vatican.va... sender ok
RCPT To: jwalters@a6.com
250 jwalters@a6.com... recipient ok
DATA Subject: I haven’t seen you in a while
354 Enter mail, end with “.” on a line by itself
John,
You haven’t been to confession in a while. Please come
and see me soon. I don’t want you to end up in purgatory.
Signed,
The Pope
.
250 HAA19816 Message

A few minutes after I created the relay message, a mail message would show
up for my friend John (and he always knew it was really from me). The message
appeared to have actually originated on the vatican.va mail server —
because it did! I used to do this demonstration for people to show them that
you shouldn’t assume that a message is genuine despite outward appearances.
By the way, vatican.va turned off mail relaying several years ago
(good for them — they probably discovered that their mail server was being
used to relay spam). Warning: Don’t try this at home — I’m quite sure that
this is illegal these days.

If spammers can’t find a mail relay, then they make one. That’s right: The
world is full of computers just waiting to be taken over, while their clueless
owners browse the Internet with a false sense of complacency.
Briefly, here’s how it works: Many viruses and worms actually plant an SMTP
relay on infected systems. Well, not a real SMTP relay in the truest sense of
the word, but something that functions as one. If you want to discover more wait for more...

first learn about the problem

Increasing e-mail volume
This is an understatement to be sure. Many studies conclude that the volume
of spam entering most businesses hovers in the 70 to 80 percent range. Your
e-mail servers are working hard to process inbound and outbound mail, and
the majority of that inbound mail is putrid filth. If you’re sufficiently privileged
to be able to walk up to your e-mail server, that giant sucking sound you hear
is the inbound spam choking the life out of your server.
Spam is consuming network resources, CPU resources, disk and network
buffers, disk space — everything. If your e-mail server is sluggish, imagine
how much faster it would run if you could eliminate 70 percent of the incoming
traffic. On the other hand, if your e-mail server is able to keep up with
the torrent of filth, it’s because you bought a system far larger than should
have been necessary, in order to manage the relevant business e-mail and
the spam.
Everybody is in the same situation: Either they’ve had to invest more capital
dollars in e-mail servers to keep up with the growing tide of spam, or else their
mail servers are suffering under the workload.
If you are so well organized that you have statistics on inbound e-mail volume
over a period of years, I’m willing to bet that you can see that the volume is
increasing at a rate that significantly outpaces any increase in the number of
employees in your organization.
Draining productivity
Almost all organizations have their share of employees who are drowning in
spam. Three to five hundred spam messages per day for some employees is
not uncommon these days. Those employees come from every level in the
organization, from executives to call center employees, and everybody in
between. So what is it like for these employees? I have spoken to more than
just a few; here is what some of them have to say:
“It takes me longer to get through my e-mail because I have to weed out
all the spam first.”
“I can’t stand the porn — even the subject lines are lewd and offensive!”
“My spam filter at home frequently throws away messages from friends. I
can’t afford to have a spam program at work toss out important messages
from customers or suppliers.”
“Yyyyyyuck!!”
These comments point to some of the key problems that result from employees
dealing with spam, which include the following:
 Extra time spent sifting through all e-mail in order to identify and delete
spam messages. This becomes increasingly difficult as spam messages
look more and more like ordinary messages.
 E-mail quota problems due to spam filling up users’ mailboxes. This is
especially troublesome for those who travel, unless they are able to log
in almost every day and delete all the spam from their inboxes.
 Loss of important business e-mail messages that were accidentally
overlooked and deleted. Legitimate messages often get caught in the
crossfire whether or not a spam-blocking solution is in place.
 Phishing scam messages that look like they originated within the company
or from a legitimate outside source. Sometimes, these scams result
in virus infections, security breaches, fraud, and other issues.
 Employees who are enticed to visit Web sites waste more time and
increase the risk of security issues caused by the hostile code on Web
sites.
 Increased computer support costs. Employees who are plagued by spam
and related maladies are certain to be calling the IT helpdesk more frequently
than employees who receive little or no spam. You are fortunate if
your helpdesk tracking data is granular enough to capture this information.
Unless you are in the upper echelon of IT organizations that measure and categorize
every electron, the spam problem is more likely one that you feel in
your gut. You know it’s a problem, perhaps a big problem.
How spam got its name
Funny names are ascribed to otherwise-mundane
components in the technology world. An e-mail
popup in X-Windows (a windowing system like
Microsoft Windows that was invented ten years
earlier) was called “biff,” which was the name of
the programmer’s dog. Those little session- or
person-identifiers that your browser stores on
your computer are called “cookies.”
And, of course, junk e-mail is called spam. But
why “spam”?
The term “spam” was first coined in the 1980s to
refer to various means of sending lots of useless
information to a computer in order to overload it
or be annoying to its users (or both). The Monty
Python “Spam” skit was new and popular among
computer science students and early (now aging)
computer professionals. Reportedly, those in the
Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) community originally
coined the term and brought it to USENET and
eventually e-mail. Legend has it that someone
programmed a macro to simply post the word
“spam” every few seconds (like part of the lyrics
from that Monty Python skit where they simply
repeat the word “spam”) . . .
SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM
SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM
SPAM SPAM
. . . until someone finally kicked him off.
Exposing the business to malicious code
Through the year 2003, almost no spam carried malicious payloads such as
viruses, worms, and Trojan horses. Spam was just spam. This changed in
2004 (how could you not have noticed?) with the apparent — uh, obvious —
growing alliance between virus writers and spammers. Theirs is a symbiotic
relationship: Spammers give virus writers the means to distribute their wares,
and now spammers can do more than just send junk mail — they can control
their victims’ computers.
Organizations with a sound antivirus infrastructure can take some consolation
in the fact that their antivirus software will strip the malicious code
from most inbound spam messages. Mail servers that are configured to strip
executable attachments from incoming e-mail messages are contributing to
the defense.
Worse yet, antivirus programs have been “looking the other way” when it
comes to spyware. Spyware isn’t stopped by most firewalls, mail servers, or
antivirus programs, and often the flaws (in configuration, as well as vulnerabilities
in design) let the spyware just waltz right in to end-user workstations
to listen, snoop, and sometimes send data back to the hacker’s home base.
Spyware also raises support cost because much of it makes browsers unstable,
and some spyware makes changes to Web browser configurations that
users notice — like changing the default home and search pages.
But is it safe to assume that 100 percent of end-user workstations are adequately
protected? You can fool yourself, but you can’t fool me. Sobering
lessons from the past should certainly convince IT professionals that a few
viruses — and a lot of spyware — are getting through the defenses.
Face it: Spam is clogging the pipes and it has attitude, and spyware is just a
little too nosey for most people to tolerate. An antivirus solution only handles
one small aspect of the spam and spyware plague: It strips malicious code
(most of the time), but does nothing about the growing volume of inbound
e-mail, and it often lets spyware right through.
Creating legal liabilities
Aside from being among the unfortunate ones whose inboxes are hammered by
spam every day, most legal departments have not yet addressed issues of corporate
liability in connection with spam or spyware. That, however, is changing.
Subjecting employees to offensive language and images
An appreciable amount of spam is pornographic in nature, and this naturally
means that employees who receive spam are going to get messages that contain
content that is offensive to many people. And this is not just in the content of
messages: Spammers are becoming more brazen and are including suggestive
and offensive messages right in the subject lines. This is an irritant to many,
but it’s insulting and distressing to others.
Some spammers have been sending messages containing only graphic images
as one method to dodge spam filters. For spammers in the business of distributing
promotional messages for porn sites, this usually means that these
images contain pornographic pictures. Depending upon how an organization’s
choice of e-mail clients, their default configuration, as well as how employees
use them, this can mean that employees who get flooded with spam will be
subjected to pornography and other offensive images.
In many instances, porn spam is sending some employees “over the top,”
resulting in grievances and even threats of lawsuits. Organizations that are
doing little or nothing to stop spam probably do not have much of a defense,
I am sorry to say. Employees who are distraught because of the offensive
nature of spam have a strong case for relief. They also have my sympathy —
I don’t like the stuff either.
Leaking corporate information via spyware
Spyware collects information as relatively harmless as a user’s surfing habits,
and as harmful as key logging (spyware that records your keystrokes and
sends the record to someone else). A corporate user’s workstation with a
working key logger can create liability if it captures a user accessing sensitive
information, and the key logger’s owner subsequently compromises
that data.
Downstream liability if spam originates from company computers
Figuratively and literally speaking, spam messages have no return address, so
it is difficult to pin the blame on those who originate the messages. However,
if a company’s own e-mail server or one of its end-user workstations was being
used as an e-mail relay (a system that spammers use to “originate” their hordes
of messages), other individuals or companies being subjected to this spam
could build a legitimate grievance against the company whose computer is
being used to relay spam.
A spammer can use a company’s e-mail server as a relay if the e-mail server is
still using old e-mail server software. In the old days, relaying e-mail through
an e-mail server was a common practice for moving legitimate mail, but now
only spammers utilize this now-antiquated function in order to cover their
tracks.
An organization ought to know how to prevent its computers from becoming
spam relays. Any organization that fails to fulfill its due diligence in this
regard can be found negligent and be subject to civil lawsuits. Organizations
that forward spam (or propagate other security threats) cannot completely
escape culpability.


Spam and Spyware: The Rampant Menace 15
No Silver Bullets: Looking
for Ways to Fight Back
Malware (which includes spam and spyware, but also viruses, Trojan horses,
and really anything that you don’t want running on your computer and would
prevent if you could) is a complex problem that comprises threats and issues
on many levels, and no single remedy can eliminate it. Your best defense against
spam and spyware is defense in depth, which is much like the multiple layers
of defense of a medieval castle.
A castle may have a moat (a body of water surrounding the castle), with a
hungry moat monster swimming around. The castle also has a drawbridge,
heavy gates, high walls, and places where archers can shoot arrows at attackers
and others can pour boiling liquids on would-be attackers who make it
across the moat. This castle has many layers of defense. Should any one or
more of these layers fail, other layers continue to provide protection.
Similarly, you can best stop (it would be more accurate to say “slow down”)
the harmful and annoying effects of spam by using a variety of remedies,
which I introduce in the following sections.
By themselves, some of the remedies I discuss will, to some degree, hinder
the effectiveness or penetration rate of malware. Together, they represent a
multilayered defense that provides a good level of resistance against spam
and spyware.
Adding a spam blocker
A key component of your defense is a spam blocker, more often called a spam
filter, which you purchase from an outside vendor. These solutions all use the
same basic features to identify and weed out spam:
 Vendor-supplied filtering rules and signatures: Computer code and a
list of known spam patterns (like fingerprints) that the spam-filtering
software uses to identify messages as spam.
 Enterprise filtering policies: Centrally managed configurations that
reflect the company’s needs.
 User preferences: User-definable settings that tell the spam filters about
spam that individuals find especially irritating, as well as options on how
the product behaves on users’ workstations.
16 Part I: Understanding the Problem
 User blacklists and whitelists: Lists of known bad addresses (that go in
the blacklist), and addresses from outsiders whose incoming messages
should never be tagged as spam (whitelists).
 Quarantines: The holding places where spam messages are stored until
individual users can look to see if any good messages were accidentally
blocked by the spam filter.
Figure 1-1 shows how a typical anti-spam application works. Exactly how each
application performs these functions varies considerably from vendor to
vendor. The following steps explain what’s going on in Figure 1-1 in more detail:
1. Inbound e-mail arrives at the anti-spam application.
2. The anti-spam application examines the message and compares its
contents with enterprise filtering policies, vendor-supplied filtering
rules, end-user preferences, blacklists, and whitelists.
3. The application uses the comparison to decide what to do with the
message:
• If the message is permitted to pass, the application forwards the
message to the enterprise mail server, which will in turn route it to
the recipient’s mailbox.
• If the message is not permitted to pass, the anti-spam application
will check to see if the recipient has a quarantine. If the recipient
does have a quarantine, the anti-spam application will put the message
there. If the recipient does not have a quarantine, the anti-spam
application will delete the message.
4. When the end-user logs in and runs her e-mail program, she will look
at messages in her inbox.
If there are any messages there that should be classified as spam, the
spam application usually provides a way for the user to specify that fact
so that similar messages will be rejected in the future.
5. If the end-user has a quarantine, she will also have to examine it from
time to time to make sure that there are not any messages there that
should not have been blocked.
If there are any desired messages (false positives) in the quarantine, the
user tells the anti-spam application that any messages from the sender
should be accepted; that e-mail address will be placed in the user’s whitelist.
Usually the anti-spam application will also forward the message to
the user’s normal mailbox so that she may open, read, reply, and store it
using her e-mail program.