I used the AI “Stable Diffusion” to create a few pumpkins and updated the YouTube channel header of “Cryptography for everybody”. The channel header is now changed on various occasions, such as Halloween, Christmas and Easter 🙂
You can watch my YouTube videos about cryptography and see the updated channel header here: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrypTool2
I also used the same header for the Facebook page of CrypTool 2: https://www.facebook.com/CrypTool2
The Nihilist cipher is a polyalphabetic substitution cipher, which needs two keywords. It was used by the Russian nihilists in the 19th century. To encrypt a text using the cipher, we have to perform the following three steps:
Step 1: Choose a first keyword and generate a Polybius square:
In our example here, we choose “KEYWORD“. We fill the keyword letters into a Polybius square and fill the remaining part of the square with the rest of the alphabet in alphabetical order. Our alphabet has a total of 25 letters, where I=J. Also, if a letter occurs twice or more in the keyword, we remove all other occurences of the corresponding letter:
Step 2: Choose a second keyword and generate a list of numbers:
Using the previously generated Polybius square, we convert a second keyword to a list of numbers. For example, the keyword “SECRET” we convert to:
45 12 25 21 12 51
We do so, by looking up the letters in the square and taking the digits on the left of the square as the first digit of the number and the column digit on top of the letter’s column as the second digit of the number.
Step 3: Encrypt the plaintext using the numerical key:
In the last step, we encrypt our plaintext by writing the key numbers below plaintext numbers, which we also generated using the same Polybius square. We repeat writing the keyword numbers below the plaintext numbers until we reach the end of the plaintext. Then, we add the plaintext numbers and key numbers to obtain the ciphertext:
The receiver of the encrypted message has to perform steps 1 and 2 with the same keywords to also generate the same Polybius square and same key numbers. To decrypt the ciphertext, he has to subtract the key numbers from the ciphertext numbers and then look up the corresponding plaintext letters in the Polybius square.
I also created a YouTube video about the Nihilist cipher, which I uploaded to my YouTube Channel:
I created a CrypTool 2 component and template, which implements the Nihilist cipher. Besides the “original” cipher with a Polybius square of 25 letters, it also allows to encrypt using a square with 26 letters and 10 digits:
You can download CrypTool 2 from here.
Francis Bacon was the 1st Viscount St Alban and lived from the 22nd January 1561 until the 9th April 1626. He was an English philosopher and statesman. Also, Bacon is seen as one of the fathers of modern science.
Despite that, he invented the after him named “Bacon cipher”, which is actually not a cipher but a steganographic method. It was published after his death in the book “Of the Advancement and Proficience of Learning or the Partitions of Sciences IX Bookes” (Bacon , Francis (1640) translated by Gilbert Wats, Oxford University. On pages 257 up to 271, you can read the “original” description of Bacon’s cipher. A digitized version of the book can be found here: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/86617#page/384/mode/1up
As mentioned above, the Bacon cipher is not a real cipher but it is a steganographic method. Bacon used it to hide secret texts within unsuspicious carrier texts. To do so, he used a “biliteral (hand-written) alphabet”.
His first step was to encode the plaintext using a code table:
For example, if you want to encode and then hide “HELLO WORLD”, you would do it like this:
First, you replace the “H” with “aabbb”, then you replace the “E” with “aabaa”, and so on:
Second, you hide the text using a bilateral alphabet. In our example here, the one alphabet uses bold letters and the other non-bold letters:
Here, you use the generated ab-pattern in the carrier text. We used non-bold letters for the “a”s and bold letters for the “b”s. The receiver has to reverse the order to obtain the hidden message. Clearly, we only transmit the carrier text and not the ab-pattern :-).
Bacon used two different styles of hand-written alphabets. On the right side here, you can see a copy of the page of Bacon’s book showing these alphabets. As we can see, there are two styles for all uppercase and lowercase alphabet letters.
When Bacon wanted to hide his AB-pattern(s) in the text, he used the one alphabet style for “A”s and the other alphabet style for “B”s.
I also made a video about the cipher and uploaded it to YouTube 🙂
When you encrypt using a modern block cipher (e.g. AES) the last plaintext block is often not exactly of block size bytes. To still allow the block cipher to encrypt it, we have to apply “padding”.
Padding adds data to the end of a message prior to the encryption. There is bit padding (which adds bits) and byte padding (which works on complete bytes). Here, we focus on byte padding.
Some examples for (byte) padding (modes) also implemented in CrypTool 2 are:
– “None” –> no padding at all
– 0-Padding –> adds zeros to the end of the block
– 1-0-Padding –> adds a one and then zeros to the end of the block
– ANSI X9.23 Padding –> adds zeros and the last byte is the number of padded bytes
– ISO 10126 Padding –> adds random bytes and last byte is the number of padded bytes
– PKCS#7 Padding –> adds the value n of padded bytes n-times to the end of block
In the video below of my “Cryptography for everybody” YouTube channel, I discuss what padding is, show all mentioned different padding modes, and also analyze these using CrypTool 2.
In the last view days, I implemented the Mexican Army Cipher Disk and its cryptanalysis in CrypTool 2. I also made a YouTube video about that (see below in this blog post).
The Constitutionalists in Mexico used the Mexican Army Cipher Disk at the beginning of the 20th century during the Mexican revolution. It is a homophonic substitution cipher, but rather weak. For encrypting a letter, you have either a 3-symbol or a 4-symbol homophone group, with a total of 100 homophones (01 to 00).
The groups are created using the disk device, which consists of 5 disks (see shown figure above):
• The outer disk contains the Latin alphabet
• Four inner disks contain 2 digits numbers
• Four inner disks can be turned
The key of the cipher is the rotation of the four inner disks and can be described in two ways:
1) The digit groups below the letter A : 01, 27, 53, 79
2) With four Latin letters ; each letter is the one above the first digit group of the corresponding disk: A, A, A, A
Now, if you want to also build your own cipher disk, you may use my self-created template here:
Since I used powerpoint to create the template, the angles are not 100% perfect, but it still works well. You need to print it five times and always cut a smaller disk out of each printout. To get more stability, you may also use some cardboard and glue the disks onto these before assembling the device. Finally, all the disks are placed on top of each other. I used a paper clip that I bent and put through all the slices.
If we want to break the Mexican Army Cipher Disk, it is a rather easy task. By hand, we just search in each number group (01 to 26, 27 to 52, 53 to 78, and 79 to 00) for the most frequent homophone. This stands probably for the letter E. Move your disks to all found E positions and you should be able to decrypt your ciphertext.
If you don’t want to break it by hand, you can use CrypTool 2 and the “Mexican Army Cipher Disk Analyzer” component for automatic cryptanalysis. It performs a brute-force attack and searches through all disk settings. Here, with the help of a language model (e.g. English pentagrams) it scores each of the decrypted texts. The correct plaintext should be on the first position of the best list of the analyzer.
I alse created a YouTube video about the Mexican Army Cipher Disk. You may watch it here:
On Saturday the 23rd July 2022, the Maritime Radio Historical Society (MRHS) and the Cipher History Museum sent an Enigma-encrypted radio transmission via the KPH stations. I was able to receive the message and decrypt it using CrypTool 2. Message was sent via Morse (CW) frequencies and radioteletype (RTTY) frequencies.
In one of my YouTube videos, I explain how I received the message using KiwiSDR and how the Morse decoding in KiwiSDR and the decryption process in CrypTool 2 worked. I thank Tom Perera from the cryptocollectors group for providing the playbacked parts of the original audio recording of the transmission. Finally, I recorded the wrong audio device, thus, I only had the video recording of what I did.
Despite not being the fastest decipherer, I am proud that I received a very nice certificate. I got it after sending the plaintext to the Martitime Radio Historical Society via email:
If you want to try to decrypt the Enigma message on your own, here is my received and Morse-decoded message (actual ciphertext in bold):
FQ CQ DE KPH KPH KPH CQCQ CQ DE KPH KPH KPH CRYPTO MESSAGE FOLLOWS bt HQTRS FR FOCH 1914Z bt 100 bt BRV LTV bt VCXTY JRVHA NNKMO FGKIG OIPLM KVHVZ WDMIP XWRBX JKDWT KGZZA IWJVN QUTJF HPPWG KEDDQ QFEMT UKMQU IDIGF YUAJB RPPWS IBJCV EI[err][err]E CQ CQ CQ DE KPH KPH KPH CQ CQ CQ DE KPH KPH KPH CRYPTO MESSAGE FOLLOWS bt HQTRS FR FOCH 1914Z bt 100 bt BRV LTV bt VCXTY JRVHA NNKMO FGKIG OIPLM KVHVZ WDMIP XWRBX JKDWT KGZZA IWJVN QUTJF HPPWG KEDDQ QFEMT UKMQU IDIGF YUAJB RPPWS IBJCV E 5IH[err][err][err][err]EN SVAM bt I[err]
You can decrypt it using CrypTool 2 or any Enigma simulator. Here is a screenshot of the Enigma and settings in CrypTool 2:
– To visit the MRHS, please go to: https://www.radiomarine.org
– The Cipher History Museum go to: https://cipherhistory.com/
– KiwiSDR you can find here: http://kiwisdr.com
In my newest video on “Cryptography for everybody”, I explain how zero-knowledge proofs and protocols work. A zero-knowledge proof or protocol is a method by which one party (usually Peggy P) can prove to another party (usually the verifier Victor V) that they know a value (e.g. a secret key or password) without actually revealing it.
First, we discuss the classical cave example by Quisquater: Here, Peggy wants to prove to Victor that she knows how to open a secret door in a cave. But only to Victor and not to anyone else.
Then, we have a look at a real zero-knowledge protocol: the Fiat-Shamir Protocol. This protocol works with modular arithmetic. Peggy has to create a private key s and register her public key v = s² with a trusted third party. Then, Victor can challenge her with a simple protocol. How this works, I explain in the video.
Finally, we have a look at the zero-knowledge simulation in CrypTool 2. Watch the video here:
“Cave” paper by Quisquater: Quisquater, Jean-Jacques, et al. “How to explain zero-knowledge protocols to your children.” Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology. Springer, New York, NY, 1989.
Feige-Fiat-Shamir protocol: Feige, Uriel, Amos Fiat, and Adi Shamir. “Zero-knowledge proofs of identity.” Journal of cryptology 1.2 (1988): 77-94.
I spend some time on the Random Number Generator component of CrypTool 2. The component allows the generation of random numbers. The output format can be set to byte array, (big) integer, integer array, or just a random bool 🙂
One of my students implemented the component a few years ago. I realized, that the component did not output the random numbers directly. Instead, it created “new” random numbers by a creating single bits per random number. The bits then were used to create the output data. Since people should get what they selected I changed the code. Now, it directly outputs the original random numbers. Also, the generation was not very fast. It “wasted” a lot of bits. You needed to create 8 random numbers for a single 8 bit random number.
Speaking of generators: the component offers different pseudo random number generators. For example linear congruential generator, inverse congruential generator, and x^2 mod N. It offers also the standard .net Random.random as well as the cryptographic random number generator RNGCryptoServiceProvider. For the generation of cryptographic keys and IVs this should always be used.
Additionally, I added the “XORShift” random number generator with 8 bit, 16 bit, 32 bit, and 64 bit. The XORShift takes the previous number and XORes it three times with a shifted value of itself. For example, the 8 bit XORShift can be implemented with five shifts to the left, three shifts to the right, and seven shifts to the left:
_state = (byte)(_state ^ (_state << 5));
_state = (byte)(_state ^ (_state >> 3));
_state = (byte)(_state ^ (_state << 7));In a similiar fashion, I implemented 16 bit, 32 bit, and 64 bit. Wikipedia contains many other versions of XORShift. These I will probably implement in the near future. For fun, I created a comparision using images of all XORShift implementations we have in CT2. The figure at the beginning of thist blog post shows this comparision. As you can see, XORShift 16 already looks “very” random. That is because of its period of 2^16, meaning, after 2^16 iterations the numbers repeat.
You can test the new XORShift in the new nightly build of CT2. Also, if you are interested in more details about XORShift, I recommend reading the nice Wikipedia article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xorshift. XORShift is also really nice for creating random numbers on old 8 bit machines like the C64. Its easy to implement, fast, and “random enough” for games :-).
Nils
I recently got some interesting feedback to the “Break reduced RSA” YouTube video I made some time ago. Of course I used CrypTool 2 (CT2) in that video. One viewer asked me, why we chose to generate non-safe primes, as well as if the quadratic sieve component of CT2 is able to break RSA challenge numbers. My answer to the second question: Since we have a quite old implementation of msieve (the library we use) converted to C# long ago, I don’t think the factorization algorithm is as powerful as the current state-of-the-art factorization libraries. Nevertheless, it is “good enough” to show how to break RSA (up to N in range of 2^300).
The answer to the safe prime question: Good question! I never thought of generating such numbers in CT2 and thought standard prime numbers are ok for CT2. I mean, it is a tool for education and not meant for any security purposes. Nevertheless, in real world applications you use large primes for RSA with additional requirements: They should be safe. So I updated the RSA KeyGenerator component to also allow the generation of safe primes. But are safe prime numbers still needed with RSA modules in the range of 2^2048 and above? For the current state-of-the-art of RSA factorization, you may have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_Factoring_Challenge.
A number p is a prime number, if it is only divisible by itself and by 1. For example 13 is a prime number, or 17, or 23, … etc. A “safe prime” number p is a number, that is prime AND (p – 1) / 2 is also a prime number which we then call a Sophie Germain prime. An example for a safe prime is 23, because (23 – 1) / 2 = 11 is a Sophie Germain prime. Safe prime numbers are more resistant against some factorization methods, which could be used to factorize the RSA’s N (which is the product of two large primes p and q).
I questioned that myself and found a paper by Rivest, who is the R in RSA. Already in 1999, Rivest stated that: “We find that for practical purposes using large “random” primes offers security equivalent to that obtained by using “strong” primes. Current requirements for “strong” primes do not make them any more secure than randomly chosen primes of the same size. Indeed, these requirements can lead a general audience to believe that if a prime is “strong” that it is secure and that if it isn’t “strong” then it must be “weak” and hence insecure. This simply is not true.” [1]
Rivest speaks about “strong” primes, not about safe primes. Strong primes have additional properties, from which “safe” primes fullfil one. But today, the usage of just “random” primes is good enough to keep RSA secure, since the primes are so large, that the properties for “strong” and “safe” are negligible. The “safe” property for primes was introduced to counter special factorization algorithms, like Pollard-Rho. But the modules we use today with RSA are too large to be factored with e.g. Pollard-Rho.
Nevertheless, now we have the choice in CT2 to generate either “random” or “safe” primes. Also, the RSA KeyGenerator uses a cryptographic random number generator during the generation of the RSA keys. In the CT2 workspace shown at the beginning of the blog article, we generate a 1024 bit RSA key and set the generator to “safe” prime generation. The prime test components evaluate the generated primes p and q and if both are “green” this means that the primes are safe.
You may be interested in my RSA YouTube video:
And you may also be interested in my “How to break reduced RSA” YouTube video:
[1] Rivest, Ronald L., and Robert D. Silverman. “Are Strong Primes Needed for RSA?” IN THE 1997 RSA LABORATORIES SEMINAR SERIES, SEMINARS PROCEEDINGS. 1999.
Nils
Today, I updated the “transposition analyzer” component of CrypTool 2 (CT2) to make its usage more convenient. The analyzer allows the cryptanalysis of ciphertexts that are encrypted using the columnar transposition cipher. It was written some time ago in the early days of CT2 by some of my commolitons when I was doing my masters.
It always bugged me that you needed to restart the analyzer when you wanted to analyze different key lengths. For example, if you assumed that a ciphertext had been encrypted using a columnar transposition cipher, but you were unsure which key length had been used (e.g. between 5 and 15), you had to restart it for any of the assumed key lengths.
Now, its a matter of setting minimum and maximum key lengths, and the analyzer will test all lengths of the defined range 🙂
Btw, the transposition analyzer supports different cryptanalysis methods/heuristics: brute-force for smaller key lengths, genetic algorithm and hillclimbing for longer key lengths. Also, if you have a crib (a part of known plaintext), the crib analysis can be used.
But besides simply just updating the component, I fixed a few bugs and generally improved the C# code a bit 🙂
If you want to see how to use the transposition analyzer of CT2, I created a video about it in the past:
Probably, I will also create a new video about columnar transposition ciphers and the updated transposition analyzer in the near future.
We published some years ago a paper about cryptanalysis of the columnar transposition cipher in Cryptologia [1].
Finally, if you want to simply encrypt or decrypt using the columnar transposition cipher, you may have a look at the nice implementation in CrypToolOnline: https://www.cryptool.org/en/cto/transposition
[1] Lasry, George, Nils Kopal, and Arno Wacker. “Cryptanalysis of columnar transposition cipher with long keys.” Cryptologia 40.4 (2016): 374-398.
Nils
