Tag: CrypTool 2

Cryptography for everybody: Perceptual Hashing to Compare Images

Some years ago, I supervised a bachelor project with the topic “image processing” at the University of Kassel (when I was working for the “Applied Information Security” group). The bachelor students had to implement image processing components in CrypTool 2.

One result of the project was the so called “ImageHash” component. One of my students implemented the “block hash” by Steinebach [1]. It is a robust (or perceptual) hash function, that allows to use it for the search for images in image databases, even when the image is different (e.g. resized or modified) from the original.

This hash algorithm works in four steps:
Step 1: Grayscale: Colors (RGB) are converted to grayscale (0x00 to 0xFF)
Step 2: Resize: Image is resized to target size e.g. 16×16 pixels
Step 3: Flip: Image is flipped horizontally and vertically until the brightest quarter of the image is in the top left corner
Step 4: Binarize: Convert grayscale pixels to black and white pixels using a threshold

In the following image, an example image is hashed using these four steps:

The four steps of the block hash algorithm

I still like the component and think it was a good addition to CrypTool 2. Clearly, the bachelor students got good grades for the project. Other results were the “Image processor”, the “Transcripor”, and the “Watermark Creator” in CrypTool 2 :-).

Today, I also createad a YouTube video about perceptual hashing. Here, I also show the “ImageHash” component of CrypTool 2 . You may watch it here:

Perceptual Hashing To Compare Images

Nils

[1] Steinebach, Martin. “Robust hashing for efficient forensic analysis of image sets .” International Conference on Digital Forensics and Cyber Crime. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011

Cryptography for everybody: Let’s Create Our Own Homophonic Substitution Cipher

In our newest video on “Cryptography for everybody”, we create a homophonic substitution cipher using CrypTool 2.


The “Substitution component” of CrypTool 2 allows to create substitution ciphers. For that, we implemented an easy-to-use syntax based on plaintext and ciphertext alphabets. An “alphabet” is just a string (some text), which consists of our “symbols”. A symbol can be one or more UTF-8 characters.

Example (simple shift cipher):
– Plaintext alphabet=”ABCDEFG…Z”
– Ciphertext alphabet=”BCDEFGH…A”

Providing these two alphabets to the substitution component would create a simple shift cipher, where each letter of the plaintext alphabet is shifted one to the left in our corresponding ciphertext alphabet. In the substitution component, letters are substituted based on their corresponding positions in the given alphabets. The first letter of the plaintext alphabet is substituted by the first letter of the ciphertext alphabet, the second by the second, etc.

But the substitution component is much more powerful. It allows also to create alphabets consisting of “words” and also allows alternative substitutions to create “homophones”.

Example (homophonic substitution cipher):
– Plaintext alphabet=”ABCDEFG…Z”
– Ciphertext alphabet=”[01|02][03|04]…[999|555]”

In this example, the letter A can be substituted by either 01 or 02. The brackets tell the substitution component that it should use everything inside the brackets as a single ciphertext symbol. The pipe symbol tells the component that we want to create alternatives. Using this syntax, we are able to create a homophonic substitution cipher, where one plaintext letter will be replaced by one of the defined homophones.

But we are not only limited to use simple two or three digit combinations. We can also create mappings like [MAXIMILIAN] in the plaintext alphabet and [1001] in the ciphertext alphabet. Doing so, we can create so-called nomenclators. How this can be done in CrypTool 2 is part of the linked YouTube video. So if you are interested in more details, you should have a look at this 🙂

If you are interested in downloading the newest version of CrypTool 2 (I always recommend the nightly build, since it contains the newest components) go to https://www.cryptool.org/en/ct2/downloads

Nils