| Description |
1 CD-ROM ; 12 cm |
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4 3/4 in |
| Summary |
Complete security is a vital component of modern day public key cryptosystems alongside the requirement for complete secrecy. Traditional encryption algorithms of RSA and ECC are deterministic and hence have not provided complete semantic security. The data protected by these algorithms can be subject to various attacks and could potentially be decrypted just by random guessing or poorly selected field parameters. To alleviate this possibility, we have researched on the fundamental aspects behind Goldwasser and Micali's proposal of a probabilistic encryption model; which they claimed to be offering complete semantic security. However, despite the benefits, the probabilistic encryption model has been deemed impractical and has not received much attention in practice. This thesis has provided an in-depth insight into the design and implementation of a probabilistic cipher based on its original algorithm proposed and has also provided a statistical analysis of the operating time of the cipher for various key sizes and message spaces. To compensate for the lack of a published benchmark in term of literature or software, we have also implemented a working model of two commonplace ciphers of RSA and ECC which are frequently used in commercial applications. We then provide a comparative analysis of the three ciphers to provide a better understanding of the behavior and characteristics of the ciphers for the encryption and decryption operations. This thesis has strived to pioneer in an area not thoroughly researched and might be the first of its kind to actually provide a comparison of three ciphers. We use the results obtained not to generalize and make a comment as to which cipher is better, but instead target our results to assist in making the decision of the choice of cipher for any application. We have provided an analysis of the ciphers not just by benchmarking performance in terms of operating time for encryption and decryption; we also ensure the same level of security has been offered by each cipher. It is essential to incorporate security in any cryptosystem, but without the knowledge of the cipher characteristics and its performance against similar alternatives, the justification behind the choice of cipher used is made purely due to the lack of a better option. This thesis has practically implemented a working model of three ciphers - Probabilistic Cipher, RSA and ECC. The implementation has been implemented on the Windows Vista and Ubuntu Linux operating systems and performs the key generation, encryption, and decryption operations for key sizes of 128/1024, 160/2048, and 192/4096 bits operating on message spaces of 750, 1500, 3000, and 5000 bits respectively. We have accounted for the variations amongst the ciphers and hence modify our implementation to accommodate for these variations. We target our comparative analysis primarily towards the encryption and decryption operations. In this sense, the thesis has tried to answer the question if the theory behind the probabilistic encryption model by Goldwasser and Micali is practically implementable and, if so, how does it actually compare to other commercial alternatives? |
| Notes |
Published on demand |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references: pages 187-190 |
| Notes |
Thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Information Technology (Professional) |
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Thesis (M.I.T.) -- Monash University, 2009 |
| File Type |
Electronic reproduction in PDF form |
| Notes |
Original version: xi, 190 pages |
| Subject |
Data encryption (Computer science)
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Computer security.
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Coding theory.
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Cryptography.
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| Genre/Form |
Academic theses.
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| Author |
Monash University, degree granting institution
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