2WF80 -- Introduction to cryptology - Winter 2021

Contents Announcements Exams Literature Videos and slides Course notes and exercise sheets Old exams

Tanja Lange
Coding Theory and Cryptology
Eindhoven Institute for the Protection of Information
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Room MF 6.104B
Technische Universiteit Eindhoven
P.O. Box 513
5600 MB Eindhoven
Netherlands

Phone: +31 (0) 40 247 4764

The easiest ways to reach me wherever I am:
e-mail:tanja@hyperelliptic.org

This page belongs to course 2WF80 - Introduction to cryptology. This course is offered at TU/e as part of the bachelor's elective package Security.

Contents
Classical systems (Caesar cipher, Vigenère, Playfair, rotor machines), shift register sequences, DES, RC4, RSA, Diffie-Hellman key exchange, cryptanalysis by using statistics, factorization, attacks on WEP (aircrack).

Some words up front: Crypto is an exciting area of research. Learning crypto makes you more aware of the limitations of security and privacy which might make you feel less secure but that's just a more accurate impression of reality and it a good step to improve your security.
Here is a nice link collection of software to help you stay secure https://prism-break.org/en/ and private https://www.privacytools.io/.

Announcements

If you study mathematics, you should have participated in "2WF50 - Algebra" and "2WF70 - Algorithmic algebra and number theory".
If you study computer science or any other program you should have participated in "2DBI00 - Linear Algebra and Applications", "2IT50 or 2IT80 - Discrete structures", and "2WF90 - Algebra for security" before taking this course.
If not you can find some material in the Literature section but note that you are on your own for learning this.

Because of the Covid-19 situation we will not have any in-person lectures. I will provide recorded videos – one video per topic, so several videos per unit – and we'll have live sessions for the exercise hours, Thursdays block 5 and 6, and Q & A sessions on Mondays block 3 and 4. Last year I often stayed around after the exercise sessions for more questions and am happy to do this again this year.

The teaching assistants for this course are:

Literature and software

It is not necessary to purchase a book to follow the course.

For some background on algebra see

Some nice books on crypto (but going beyond what we need for this course) are For easy prototyping of crypto implementations I like the computer algebra system Sage. It is based on python and you can use it online or install it on your computer (in a virtual box in case you're running windows).
For encrypting your homeworks you should use GPG/PGP. If you're running Linux then GnuPG is easy to install. If you're using windows I recommend using GPG4win; if you're using MAC-OS you can use GPG Suite. We are OK with having only the attachment being encrypted and signed, but prefer proper encryption of the whole email. Thunderbird has good integration and I hear that also outlook can work well with the plugins.

Examination

30% of the grade is determined by homeworks. There will be six sets of homework during the quarter. You should hand in your homework in groups of 2 or 3. To make sure that you get used to crypto we require solutions to be sent encrypted and signed with GPG/PGP. Each participant must have communicated with the TAs at least once using GPG/PGP. You can find my public key for tanja@hyperelliptic.org on the key servers and on my homepage. You can find the keys for the TAs linked above or also on the key servers.

The exam will take place on 24 January 2022, 13:30 - 16:30. The format of the exam is Timed exam on Ans Delft without proctoring + video upload after the exam. See below for details.
The retake is scheduled for April 19, 18:00 - 21:00. The condiions for the retake are the same as for the first exam (online on Ans Delft without proctoring, video upload after the exam). Here is the link for uploading the video to surfdrive after the retake SurfDrive link.
The exam accounts for the remaining 70% of the grade.

We're using the same setup as last year. Here is the cover sheet for the exam from last year, stating what you permitted to do and what not.

Here is a longer explanation of the exam format:
Each student gets an individualized exam, with all numbers generated by a Python script in Ans Delft so that students cannot copy solutions from each other. After the exam each student has to record a video in which they give a short explanation of how they solved the exercises. This video gets uploaded directly after the exam and checked as part of the corrections. This is to ensure that it was the student him/herself writing the exam. For that the face needs to be clearly visibe and the student should also show the student ID at the beginning of the exam. The video will be uploaded to Surfdrive; the upload time does not count against the exam time, but has a separate block of 30 min directly after the exam (shifted appropriately for those with extra time).

For students opting out of the video we'll have capacity for about 30 short live interviews right after the exam (4 TAs and Tanja, 5 min chats, during the 30 min after the exam and twice that if I go for 60 min after of if the opt-outs are balanced between people with extra time and not -- we just cannot handle all students like this). The live calls are fully ephemeral on jitsi or big-blue-button and not recorded. Please let Tanja know a few days before the exam if you want to go for this.
Like last year, the numbers will be bigger than for exams in years before the pandemic because I need numbers per student. On the plus side you can use your computer for the calculations and you can cut-and-paste between the browser and the system, so that you should never copy a number by hand. Please make sure that your set-up works for this. I don't want to see any mistakes that happen because you mistyped a number.
I do expect your answer to be typed into the Ans Delft system. Do not write on paper and upload a epicure. You may have paper on your table if you like to sketch out things, but still should type up your solution.
To be clear: The exam will be open book, open Internet.

Videos and slides

The course covers the following topics, mostly in this order. See Course notes and exercise sheets for what you should prepare for each session and Canvas for quizzes for the videos.

This part has www.youtube-nocookie.com links to the YouTube videos. Watch them from here if you're on a low-cookie diet. For even fewer cookies, you can find the videos on surfdrive. File names match the file names of the slides.

If you prefer watching on YouTube, you can also go to the YouTube Channel for the course.

Introduction and concepts

This video covers basic concepts of cryptology.

See also the slides.

I recorded a video to explain public-key cryptography.
The video explains public-key cryptography for encryption and signatures. To submit your homeworks you will need to use PGP/GnuPG. See above for software suggestions. Note that the sender needs the public key of the recipient in order to send a message. This means that you need to send your public Key and those of your team mates to the TAs so that they can reply to you.

You can find the slides here.

We need to cover formal security notions so that we can say when a system is broken.

The slides are here

Security notions and attack definitions for encryption and signatures:
These formalize what we consider an attack and what powers the attacker has.
In a full break the private key is recovered. For signatures, the attack goal is to forge signatures, this could mean to generate any valid (m,s) pair (existential forgery) or to generate valid (m,s) for a meaningful message m (universal forgery).
For encryption the goal is to recover plaintext from ciphertext;, i.e. to break one-wayness. We typically request that a scheme is so strong that the attacker learns no information about the plaintext from the ciphertext; this is called semantic security. However, this is hard to deal with in practice. An equivalent and more practical security requirement is indistinguishability: the attacker chooses two messages m0 and m1 and is then presented with a ciphertext c which encrypts one of m0 and m1. The attacker wins if he correctly guesses which, i.e., if he can distinguish the ciphertexts. To deal with a 50% chance of guessing, the advantage of the attacker is defined as the extra chance on top of the 50%. See the video and slides for the full formal definition.

The abilities of the attacker vary; for signatures it might be a key-only attack (KOA), a known message attack (KMA), or a chosen message attack (CMA). In the latter two cases the attacker sees valid signature pairs (m,s); in CMA the attacker can choose for which messages he sees signatures.

For encryption the attacker may do a chosen-plaintext attack (CPA) or a chosen-ciphertext attack (CCA). There are two versions of CCA security: in CCA-I the attacker gets to request decryptions of arbitrary ciphertexts until he sees c; in CCA-II the attacker can request decryptions of ciphertexts c' (not equal to c) also after receiving c.

Math background

If you don't recall how to invert integers modulo other integers I made a video explaining the extended Euclidean algorithm (XGCD)

with slides.

I recorded a video to demonstrate how to use Sage https://www.sagemath.org/, covering basics of finite fields and elliptic curves. The latter do not for this course so watch start till minute 10:50 and then again for about 2 minutes after 19:30.

I also wrote a short ``cheat sheet'' with commands for Sage, see here

As a reminder, watch this video on how to compute exponentiation efficiently

The slides are here

Exponentiation by square and multiply with an l-bit exponent takes l squarings and as many multiplications as the exponent has all bits set to 1.

I've recorded a short video to recap the Chinese remainder theorem and how to compute solutions.

The slides are here

More TBD

Historical ciphers

Watch this video to learn about the substitution cipher, Caesar cipher, one-time pad, and Vigen&egrav;re encryption as well as how to analyze them.

See also the slides.

This video covers more historical ciphers (Playfair, Hill cipher, column transposition, and very briefly rotor machines.

See also the here.

We currently have one rotor machines from the Cryptomuseum on show in the MetaForum (near the elevator on floor 6 - not that that helps you now, but it's something to look forward to). Check out their extensive website on crypto machines and spy craft.

(Linear) Feedback Shift registers

This first video introduces feedback shift registers and how to use them for encryption; the definitions of state, period, pre-period,, ultimately periodic sequences. We also prove the following lemma: If the sequence is periodic with period r and si = si+l for all i then r divides l.

The slides are here.

This video introduces linear feedback shift registers (LFSRs) and how we draw them, motivates that we want c0=1 (else there is just a delay in output).
I didn't show this but one can run the LFSR backwards and thus the is periodic, not just ultimately periodic.
The zero state produces the zero sequence, thus the max period is 2^n-1, For two examples the video determines all periods that can be generated by those LFSRs.

See here for the slides.

This video establishes a relationship between state update and a matrix, the state-update matrix. The order of the matrix is a multiple of the period of the LFSR.The video gives an example of how this order is computed and proves a formula for the characteristic polynomial of the matrix. This will be useful for further investigations.

See here for the slides.

Do not watch this video before you're done with exercise 1 on sheet 2 and have developed some conjectures.

This video takes some of the conjectures that you should have found, turns them into theorems and proves them. Once they are proven, you can use them as facts, so proofs are useful. The video also recalls the definition of irreducible polynomials and Rabin's irreducibly test.
See here for the slides.

Hardware design motivates combining short LFSRs, so this video looks at sums of LFSRs.

The video develops some hypotheses about sums of LFSRs and (partially) disproves them. Like for every movie ending with tension, there will be a sequel. Stay tuned for finding out why 21 is missing!
See here for the slides.

We have accumulated a bunch of open problems and hypotheses. This video

cleans everything up so that now we can look at an LFSR and with very few steps determine its properties. The slides are here.

LFSRs are used in practice because they are small and efficient, but they need a non-linear component to be secure. I cover three examples (A5/11, A5/2, and SNOW-3G) in this video:

The slides show the LFSRs and some details. I also cover the history. It sounds like the 54 bits were a compromise between countries wanting strong crypto and others wanting weak crypto. One of the first postings on it with some details on the history (note that the original link does not work now) an attack idea for A5/1 by Ross Anderson is from 1994, but many details were missing. The full algorithm descriptions of A5/1 and its purposefully weakened sibling A5/2 were reverse engineered and posted in 1999 by Marc Briceno, Ian Goldberg, and David Wagner. The same group also showed a devastating attack on A5/2, allowing for real-time decryption. Sadly enough, the A5 algorithms allow downgrade attacks, so this is a problem for any phone which has code for it, which is most until recently. Also A5/1 does not offer 2^54 security (54 bits is the effective key length) but only 2^24 (with some precomputation/space). However, A5/2 is broken even worse, in 2^16 computations, with efficient code online, e.g A5/2 Hack Tool.

Further reading.

Stream ciphers, block ciphers, modes

This video introduces basic concepts of stream ciphers and highlights the importance of the IV (initialization vector). To show why it is necessary I review issues with the "two-time pad".

The slides are here.
Stream ciphers are much more practical than the OTP in that the key is much shorter. To encrypt a message, expand the key into a stream of pseudo-random bits and xor those to the message, i.e., treat the stream-cipher output as the one-time pad. To encrypt multiple message it becomes necessary to remember how many bits have been used and either stay in that state or forward by that many positions the next time one uses the cipher. This is impractical. Initialization Vectors (IVs) deal with that problem in that they move the beginning of the stream to a random position. The IV is then sent in clear along with the ciphertext, so that the receiving end can compute the same starting position.

I've recorded a video to summarize the biases in RC4 and explain some. You should have solved exercise sheet 3 before watching this video.

The slides are here.

Note that RC4 was a secret design, available only as black box implementation. Soon after it was leaked as "arcfour" weaknesses were found.

Better stream ciphers exist, e.g. the final portfolio from the eSTREAM competition has held up well.

This video covers cryptographic hash functions

see here for the slides

Cryptographic hash functions need to provide preimage resistance, second preimage resistance, and collision resistance.

If the output of the hash function has n bits then finding a collision takes on average 2n/2 trials (use the birthday paradox to see this) and finding a preimage or second preimage takes on average 2n trials.

We covered design of hash functions using the Merkle-Damgaard construction and how this enables length-extension attacks. We used this as a feature in computing more SHA-1 iterations per second when searching for near collisions. See our write-up for more details. But there are also situations when this property is not welcome. One can deal with it by insisting on a fixed padding in the last block and checking for that.

Short summary of hash functions: MD4 is completely broken; for MD5 it's easy to find collisions, first SHA-1 collisions were computed in 2017 (see https://shattered.io/). SHA-256, SHA-512 and SHA-3 (and the other SHA-3 finalists) are likely to be OK.

This video is on message authentication codes (MACs)

see here for the slides

Stream ciphers are susceptible to attacks flipping bits in the ciphertext, which cause the same bits to flip in the plaintext. A fingerprint protects against accidental bit flips, but a proper Message Authentication Codes (MACs) need to resist adversarially chosen changes. Communicating parties A and B need an authentication key along with the encryption key. The easiest version of a MAC is to use a hash function to compute cryptographic checksum over the authentication key and the ciphertext. We want to have checksum on the ciphertext for easy and quick rejection of forged packets = Encrypt, then MAC. If you would use the simple MAC you would run into trouble with length-extension attacks. There are many MACs either as standalone constructions ore integrated into a block cipher + mode as in AES-GCM. The video covers HMAC as an example of MAC used in practice..

Exercise session 4 covered DES as an example of a block cipher. For more details and historical background watch the video:

The slides are here.

Block ciphers can encrypt data in blocks of fixed length n. If you encrypt each block separately your encryption is vulnerable to statistical attacks, A famous example of how weak this is is the ECB penguin. The name for this approach is ECB (electronic code book) mode. The approach means that identical blocks encrypt the same way. See below for better modes.

The video covers some details on DES, including how to decrypt a Feistel cipher. S-box is the non-linear part; the NSA strengthened the S-boxes in the original design (Lucifer) against differential attacks (but made the keys much shorter). In the exercises (sheet 4) we saw that small changes in the input lead to big changes in the output. 56 bits for the key is not secure enough! First brute force attack was done with "DES Cracker" for 250k USD. In 2006 a team from Bochum and Kiel built COPACOBANA which can break DES in a week for 8980 EUR (plus some grad-student time).

2-DES takes only 2^56 trials for complete key search. 2-DES is only marginally harder to break than DES, taking 2^57 with a divide-and-conquer approach. Still common use is 3-DES, sometimes with k1=k3. Full 3-DES needs 2^112 steps to break, there are some more weaknesses in 2-key 3-DES.

If you wonder about the security of DES, you can see how many rounds are broken at what costs and under what conditions in a table from Differential Cryptanalysis of the Data Encryption Standard by Biham and Shamir. Note that linear cryptanalysis is a more powerful attack against DES than differential cryptanalysis. If you want to see some nice explanation of linear and differential cryptanalysis, take a look at the Master thesis by Eran Lambooij. This part is purely optional.

To encrypt messages longer than one block you need to use a mode of operation. Modes are covered in this video

See here for the slides. Note that the slides have been fixed to cover an error in OFB mode.

More reasonable modes than ECB are CBC,OFB, and CTR. These modes ensure that identical plaintext blocks do not lead to identical ciphertext blocks.

Always make sure to include a MAC!

Schoolbook RSA

You should have watched Public-key and symmetric-key cryptology – or re-watch it now.

As a first public-key system we look at RSA. Warning: do not use schoolbook RSA in practice

The slides are here

The video covers
Public-key encryption requires 3 algorithms: Key generation, encryption, and decryption. Signatures also require 3 algorithms: Key generation, signing, and verification.

RSA encryption: public key for RSA is (n,e), private key is (n,d), where n=pq for two different primes p and q, φ(n)=(p-1)(q-1) and d is the inverse of e modulo φ(n). We showed how to encrypt and decrypt and why this works. Attention, this is schoolbook RSA, do not use this in practice.
If you don't remember how to compute modulo an integer or what φ(n) is, now is a good moment to catch up on this.

There are several problems with schoolbook RSA. This video covers just part 1.

The slides are here Note that a typo has been fixed on the slides.

If message and exponent are small reduction modulo n might not happen and the ciphertext is an integer e-th power of the message. Furthermore, we can recover a message that is sent to multiple (at least e) people, if they all use the same small exponent e.
Both of these issues can e sold with padding; the second attack shows that the padding has to be randomized.

This video covers some cute attack if the messages are linearly related


The slides are here

Given just two ciphertexts of linearly related messages we can decrypt the message. The same holds for messages related via a known function.

If you really needed another reason to not use schoolbook RSA, here we go. The video also covers the idea behind Bleichenbacher's attack on PKCS#1 1.5

The slides are here

RSA is homomorphic, which defeats some security notions and can mean real attacks (depending on the setting). Schoolbook RSA is not is not OW CCA-II secure, because of the homomorphic property: to decrypt c the attacker can ask for the decryption of c'=c*2^d, obtain m' and get m = m'/2.
The homomorphic property gives existential forgery under KMA: (m1*m2, s1*s2) is a valid signature different from the observed ones. This works as long as the attacker sees at least one message (he can use m1=m2). It also gives universal forgery under CMA: in order to create a signature on m the attacker asks to see a signature on m*2^e. He receives (m^d*2,s) and then obtains a valid signature on m as (m,s/2).
Because schoolbook RSA is deterministic, it is not even CPA secure: the attacker can simply encrypt m0 and m1 himself and compare the results to c..

To make RSA a randomized encryption one uses some padding; however this is also error prone. PKCS#1 v1.5 is a negative example which is broken using Bleichenbacher's attack. Take a look at https://robotattack.org/ for a recent use of Bleichenbacher's attack in practice. You should be able to understand details of the full paper Return Of Bleichenbacher's Oracle Threat. RSA-OAEP is a better padding scheme.

How does RSA get broken if it's not schoolbook RSA?

The slides are here

See https://factorable.net/) for an internet-wide scan and several factored keys. I was involved in finding a similar case in the RSA keys of Taiwanese Citizen Cards, see https://smartfacts.cr.yp.to/.

Factorization methods: trial division, p-1 method., namedropping of other factorization methods, see also http://facthacks.cr.yp.to/ for descriptions and code snippets.

Diffie-Hellman key exchange

This video introduces the Diffie–Hellman key exchange

The slides are here

Diffie-Hellman key exchange in different groups, including some insecure ones. CDHP, DDHP, DLP, relations between these problems.

DH has a problem with active man-in-the-middle attacks. Eve can establish communications with A and B and pass messages between them so that each of them is convinced they are securely talking to the other party while Eve gets all plaintext. This does require Eve to stay in the middle of the conversation and decrypt and re-encrypt all messages.

Semi-static DH has A have a fixed key which B knows to be authentic. B picks fresh random values d for each new interaction to get key freshness. If both A and B should be authenticated they can use the triple-DH handshake to combine long-term and short-term keys.

We will see more usage of DLP and DHP in the next session. For today just one more attack.

The slides are here

BSGS is an algorithm to compute discrete logarithms in a cyclic group with generator g, i.e. given g and h_A =g^a it computes a.
Put m=floor(√n), where n is the order of g. BSGS computes all powers of the generator from g^0=1 up to g^(m-1), these are the baby steps (incrementing by 1 in the exponent). Then it computes S=g^(-m) and checks for each h_A * S^j for j = 0,... whether it is in the list of baby steps; these are the giant steps (moving by m in the exponent). If a match happens, we have g^i=h_A * S^j = g^a*g^(-mj), thus a=i+mj.

I have recorded a short video to give an example of BSGS

The slides are here

In 2016 I wrote some slides for this lecture. You might find them interesting as a different way to explain BSGS.

This video covers ElGamal encryption (mostly for historical purposes) and ElGamal signatures and why they work.

The slides are here

Finally we cover the cost analysis of DLP, CDHP, and DDHP

The slides are here

Any system based on DLP has at most square root of the group order hardness of the DLP. For elliptic-curve groups that's also the best known attack complexity while there are faster attacks on finite-field DLP which reduce the complexity to that of RSA numbers of the same size.

To analyze the hardness of DDH we worked out how we can test whether the DL is even or odd and how to turn this into an attack on DDH that succeeds with non-negligible probability. A way out is to work in subgroups of F_p which have prime order. If you stay on for 2MMC10 you will encounter the Pohlig-Hellman attack, an attack that reduces the security to that of the largest prime-order subgroup, so restricting to it does not give up any security.

In modern usage of crypto we don't use public-key systems to encrypt messages but to set up a symmetric key which is then used with a streamcipher and MAC or with blockciper in a mode and with a MAC. This video covers the KEM-DEM framework, a way to make this formal

The slides are here

KEM (Key Encapsulation mechanism) is a more modern security notion than public-key encryption, using the public-key part only to generate a shared secret for use i symmetric-key cryptography, then called DEM (Data Encapsulation Mechanism). The video shows how to turn a PKE into a KEM and gives RSA and DH as examples.

Advanced use of crypto

This video is about Shamir secret sharing

The slides are here

Shamir secret sharing: allows to share a secret in a t-out-of-N fashion so that any set of t people can recover it; It works by picking a random degree-(t-1) polynomial with constant term as the secret and giving each user a share (i,f(i)) for non-repeating and nonzero i. Recovering the secret works by simple Lagrange interpolation.

Note that the secret never needs to be re-computed -- for applications in RSA or DH the shares can be applied individually and then only the per-message secrets be combined. Also note that there is no need to ever have the secret -- it can be generated from t shares; these shares are then re-shared in a t-out-of-N fashion.

The next video deals with authenticated key agreement.

The slides are here

The lecture introducing DH had left open the details on how to avoid that Eve can be in the middle. The video first covers the Needham-Schroeder authentication protocol and why it doesn't actually prove to B that he is talking to A. Triple DH or DH together with signatures achieves authentication and key freshness.

The last video of this course is about different types of signatures.

The slides are here

Blind signatures are used in eCash and easy to get from homomorphic RSA signatures. For undeniable signatures Chaum showed a protocol relying on the hardness of the discrete-logarithm problem.

Class notes and exercise sheets

This section is extended through the course. I will announce here which topics we cover which weeks and which videos you should watch to prepare for the live sessions. See here for videos and slides.

15 Nov 2021
Please watch the first two videos, about basic concepts and historical ciphers, before the first live session. In the live session on Mon 15 2021 in block 3 and 4 we will discuss general topics about the course and your questions about these videos. There is also a quiz on Canvas.

Here are the slides we discussed in the live Q & A session.

18 Nov 2021
In preparation, please watch the videos on XGCD (optional, only if you don't remember), the second historical ciphers video, and the first video on stream ciphers. Here is the exercise sheet for block 5 and 6: exercise-1.pdf. See also the raw data if paste fails.

For most of the exercises the solution is obvious when you have it. There are many more pages on the web with tools for cryptanalysis of classical ciphers, e.g. https://www.guballa.de/vigenere-solver, https://www.braingle.com/brainteasers/codes/index.php, http://www.cryptool-online.org, http://practicalcryptography.com/ciphers/, https://www.boxentriq.com/code-breaking.

The first homework is due on 25 November 2021 at 13:30. Here is the first homework sheet. Please remember to submit your homework by encrypted, signed email to the TAs. Don't forget to include your public key and those of your team mates.
Two errors have now been fixed in exercse 1. I was mixing solution and question when I typed the text; the known friends are called Wilhelmina and Theodor. There was also a character flip in an early versio of this sheet. Make sure to reload if you don't see Theodor mentioned.

22 Nov 2021
Please watch the videos on feedback-shift registers (FSRs), LFSRs and how to represent them via matrices.
Some time before Thursday also watch the lecture on public-key cryptography (under general concepts). You should watch this video to understand the data flow in PGP/GnuPG which you need for submitting your homework.
Please ask questions on Zulip so that I can prepare something for the Q&A session.

This time I got a few questions before the lecture, thanks for that. I clarified a few things regarding the Hill cipher and the column transposition cipher, see the screenshots here and here.
For questions regarding the exercise about the Hill cipher I used the slides from last year's live Q & A session which show how to compute c and d. I also talked about what we mean by non-random properties and why the IV matters/how it is used, but without making notes.

25 Nov 2021
We'll do another round on wonder.me; really hope the quirks from last week won't reappear. See you there at 13:30.
There are no new videos to watch before the exercise session, but brush up your abiilities with computer-algebra systems so that you can deal with large matrices and polynomials modulo 2.

Here is the exercise sheet for block 5 and 6: exercise-2.pdf. You should really try to solve these exercises and make some conjectures about how orders, degrees, and periods fit together. I'm holding back on some video with explanations to make you solve these. You shold call us over for checking but I'll also make a quizz available if you don't manage to finish on time.

The second homework is due on 2 December 2021 at 13:30. Here is the second homework sheet. Please remember to submit your homework by encrypted, signed email to the TAs. Don't forget to include your public key and those of your team mates.

29 Nov 2021
Please bring your questions on LFSRs.

In the live session we did some examples of sums of LFSRs see pictures 1, 2 3, 4.

02 Dec 2021
Here is the exercise sheet for block 5 and 6: exercise-3.pdf.

The cipher we analyzed in the exercise session is RC. I find it quite surprising that such a widely used cipher exhibits properties we can find in an exercise session (well, knowing where to look, of course). For much more info, see the video above.

The third homework is due on 09 December 2020 at 13:30. Here is the second homework sheet. Please remember to submit your homework by encrypted, signed email to all the TAs (and not to Tanja). Don't forget to include your public key and those of your team mates. Do not submit as a singleton, the minimum group size is 2.

06 Dec 2021
The topics for the Q & A session are everything we have covered so far, in particular the videos on RC4 and hash functions, but please ask about LFSRs as well, if anything is unclear. Again, I appreciate geting questions in advance.
In the end we covered some details of the Math vs. mystery talk for the example LFSR on the slide, see screenshot,

09 Dec 2021
We will be using Canvas conference again, you should have received an invitation already. Here is the exercise sheet for block 5 and 6: exercise-4.pdf.

The fourth homework is due on 16 December 2021 at 13:30. Here is the fourth homework sheet. Please remember to submit your homework by encrypted, signed email to all TAs (and not to Tanja). Don't forget to include your public key and those of your team mates. Do not submit as a singleton, the minimum group size is 2.

13 Dec 2021
Session 8 (last Thu) concluded the symmetric-key cryptography part of the course. Today's videos are about RSA, the first public-key system we study in this course.
This is a good moment to ask questions about symmetric crypto, in particular block ciphers and modes of operation, hash functions and MACs. Of course I'm happy to talk RSA or older topics as well. Please ask beforehand on Zulip for better quality answers.

I had gotten a question before regarding how to recover the feedback coefficients of an LFSR from the stream. See screenshots 1, 2, and 3 for details.

Last year I had gotten questions regarding the cost of brute-force search against DES, 2DES, and 3DES, so I covered those. See screenshots 4, 5, and 6 for details.
I used slides from last year's live session showing the internals of MD4. The slides are here

16 Dec 2021
We will meet on Canvas conference for the instruction. If you don't recall the Chinese Remainder theorem and how to compute with it, check out the video (under math background above) before the exercise session. Here is the exercise sheet for block 5 and 6: exercise-5.pdf.

The fifth homework is due on 23 December 2021 at 13:30. Here is the homework sheet. Please remember to submit your homework by encrypted, signed email to all TAs. Don't forget to include your public keys.

The lectures for today are two more attacks on RSA and one on security notions, see above

20 Dec 2021
New topics for the Q&A session today are all things RSA and the first videos on Diffie-Hellman.

We ended up talking about padding oracle attacks and what level of documentation is needed for computing CRT.
Here are the screenshots 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

23 Dec 2021
We will meet on Canvas conference for the instruction. Please see above for a video explaining BSGS with an example. Here is the exercise sheet for block 5 and 6: exercise-6.pdf.

The sixth (and last) homework is due on 13 January 2022 at 13:30. Here is the homework sheet. Please remember to submit your homework by encrypted, signed email to all TAs. Don't forget to include your public keys.

The videos for today are ElGamal and hardness of DLP, in addition to the BSGS example.

Enjoy your holidays. If you want to do some crypto take a look at the old exams (below). Ask on Zulip or email me if you have questions or think you have solutions to old exams (= send me scans of your solutions and I'll send comments back). The exam for 2WF80 will be online on Ans Delft, see above. We will use the retake from last year (April 2021) for the instruction session on 20 Jan, so pick the first one from last year (25 Jan 20210 for practicing alone.

10 Jan 2022
This live session will be held on Canvas. Please send me your questions. The vieos for today are the KEM-DEM framework and Shamir secret sharing.

13 Jan 2022
Regular instructions session. Here is the exercise sheet for block 5 and 6: exercise-7.pdf.

Please watch the videos of session 14, namely autheenticated key agreement and advanced signatures.

17 Jan 2022
Q&A session. Ask anything incl old exams, but skip the April 2021 exam.
Questions were whether BSGS has a unique answer (yes, modulo the order of g), how to solve exercise 2 from Jan 2015 (you know these attacks, but need to recognize them), whether the numbers will be this large (yes!), and what was on the missing pictures (very sorry, I'm adding them now below. I hadn't realized that Ans was cutting them out in the printout.
There was also some discussion about the level of documentation you need to provide. I need to see what you type into the computer algebra system and what the output is. If the exercise asks for some intermediate result you need to provide them, too. In general, it's better to document too much rather than too little. If you're using your own implementation please provide that as well, but after the numbers and code relevant to the exercise. You may use function calls in sage such as crt or gcd. If I ask you to use BSGS you need to use that rather than the discrete log function.

20 Jan 2022
Instruction session. We'll use the April 2021 exam for this session. Please take a look before and focus on the questions where you expect problems. Call us to your breakout room if you want to check your answers, need some hint or some explanation.

24 Jan 2022
Exam! See above.


Old Exams

This course was given for the first time in Q2 of 2014. Here are my exams so far