The Diffie-Hellman key exchange was first published by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman in 1976 and is a popular method for exchanging cryptographic keys. The method is one of the most straight-forward examples of key exchanges implemented in the cryptology field and allows two individuals or parties that have not worked together before to establish …
A wordlist is a text file containing a collection of words for use in a dictionary attack. Wordlist Usage A dictionary attack using a wordlist relies on the fact that most users choose weak passwords. Very common passwords include password, computer, work, and most of the popular female names. Common Dictionary Attacks Using A Wordlist …
In the study of cryptography the terms plaintext and ciphertext are used to describe the plain language message or information and the resulting encrypted message or data that results from the use of a cipher or encryption algorithm. The resulting ciphertext is not readable by either a human or computer without the correct cipher to …
Symmetric Cryptographic Algorithms DES (Data Encryption Standard) is perhaps the most widely used cryptographic algorithm. DES is based upon IBM’s Lucifer algorithm. The NBS (National Bureau of Standards) and the NSA (National Security Agency) adopted DES as a federal standard in 1977. DES is a symmetric cipher with an effective key length of 56 bits. …
Steganography has gained a significant amount of press over the past several years when the technique hit the press as a possible method that many of the terrorists involved with the 9/11 attacks used to plan the operation. Similar to the use of encryption, steganography techniques have become one of the basic methods that organizations …
GPG, or GNU Privacy Guard, is a free replacement and competing product for PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). The project is a data encryption and decryption application which provides end-users with a cryptographic privacy and authentication system for communicating electronic data. GPG can be used to sign, encrypt, and decrypt text, for email, files, directories, and …
RC4 is one of the most used software-based stream ciphers in the world. The cipher is included in popular Internet protocols such as SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and WEP (for wireless network security). The cipher is fairly simplistic when compared to competing algorithms of the same strength and boasts one of the fastest speeds of …
A brute force attack consists of trying every possible code, combination, or password until the right one is found. Determining the Difficulty of a Brute Force Attack The difficulty of a brute force attack depends on several factors, such as: How long can the key be? How many possible values can each key component have? …
The known ciphertext attack, or ciphertext only attack (COA) is an attack method used in cryptanalysis when the attacker has access to a given set of ciphertext(s). The attacker does not have access to corresponding cleartext in this method; however, COA is successful when correspdonding plaintext can be determined from a given set of ciphertext. …
RSA, which stands for Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman, is a security algorithm used in digital cryptography. RSA differs from older symmetric algorithms because it has the ability of allowing digital signing as well as advanced encryption for online commerce systems and high-profile institutions. RSA was one of the first major advancements in digital cryptography but …