Chapter 5: Cryptography

Chapter 5: Cryptography

Joseph Damico

Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, CA
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl.

Overview

Cryptography, the art of keeping messages secure, has been practiced for thousands of years throughout the world, yet has remained virtually unknown outside of governments until only recently. The popularity and insecurity of the Internet and controversies over the United States? export policies and proposed key escrow systems have brought cryptographic systems to the attention of the general public. Many modern cryptographic systems rely on computers to execute the algorithms needed to secure messages. Cryptanalysis , the art of breaking the code of secure messages, relies even more on computers.

Anyone transmitting private, proprietary, or otherwise important data over the Internet or any other open means of communication should consider some level of encryption. The data?s value and the likely threats against it determine the amount of encryption security needed. This section introduces some of the important concepts of cryptography and cryptanalysis, and provides simple VIs to demonstrate the algorithms discussed. The VIs do not provide sufficient security for most applications. They are presented only to demonstrate the algorithms and show their LabVIEW implementations.

Terminology and Background

A typical cryptographic system takes a plaintext message M and encrypts with an algorithm E, which outputs a ciphertext message C. This is stated as

(5.1)

C = E ( M )

The encryption algorithm relies on confusion and diffusion to obscure the original...

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Chapter 5: Cryptography

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