Ciphertext

Summary

In cryptography, ciphertext or cyphertext is the result of encryption performed on plaintext using an algorithm, called a cipher. Ciphertext is also known as encrypted or encoded information because it contains a form of the original plaintext that is unreadable by a human or computer without the proper cipher to decrypt it. This process prevents the loss of sensitive information via hacking. Decryption, the inverse of encryption, is the process of turning ciphertext into readable plaintext. Ciphertext is not to be confused with codetext because the latter is a result of a code, not a cipher. Conceptual underpinnings Let m! be the plaintext message that Alice wants to secretly transmit to Bob and let E_k! be the encryption cipher, where _k! is a cryptographic key. Alice must first transform the plaintext into ciphertext, c!, in order to securely send the message to Bob, as follows: : c = E_k(m). ! I

Official source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciphertext

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Misuse Attacks on Post-quantum Cryptosystems

Ciprian Baetu, Fatma Betül Durak, Loïs Evan Huguenin-Dumittan, Abdullah Talayhan, Serge Vaudenay

Many post-quantum cryptosystems which have been proposed in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NISI) standardization process follow the same meta-algorithm, but in different algebras or different encoding methods. They usually propose two constructions, one being weaker and the other requiring a random oracle. We focus on the weak version of nine submissions to NISI. Submitters claim no security when the secret key is used several times. In this paper, we analyze how easy it is to run a key recovery under multiple key reuse. We mount a classical key recovery under plaintext checking attacks (i.e., with a plaintext checking oracle saying if a given ciphertext decrypts well to a given plaintext) and a quantum key recovery under chosen ciphertext attacks. In the latter case, we assume quantum access to the decryption oracle.

SPRINGER INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING AG2019

Resistance against Adaptive Plaintext-Ciphertext Iterated Distinguishers

Asli Bay, Atefeh Mashatan, Serge Vaudenay

Decorrelation Theory deals with general adversaries who are mounting iterated attacks, i.e., attacks in which an adversary is allowed to make d queries in each iteration with the aim of distinguishing a random cipher C from the ideal random cipher C^*. A bound for a non-adaptive iterated distinguisher of order d, who is making plaintext (resp. ciphertext) queries, against a 2d-decorrelated cipher has already been derived by Vaudenay at EUROCRYPT '99. He showed that a 2d-decorrelated cipher resists against iterated non-adaptive distinguishers of order d when iterations have almost no common queries. More recently, Bay et al. settled two open problems arising from Vaudenay's work at CRYPTO '12, yet they only consider non-adaptive iterated attacks. Hence, a bound for an adaptive iterated adversary of order d, who can make both plaintext and ciphertext queries, against a 2d-decorrelated cipher has not been studied yet. In this work, we study the resistance against this distinguisher and we prove the bound for an adversary who is making adaptive plaintext and ciphertext queries depending on the previous queries to an oracle.

2012

Key Negotiation Downgrade Attacks on Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy

Daniele Antonioli

Bluetooth (BR/EDR) and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) are pervasive wireless technologies specified in the Bluetooth standard. The standard includes key negotiation protocols used to generate long-term keys (during pairing) and session keys (during secure connection establishment). In this work, we demonstrate that the key negotiation protocols of Bluetooth and BLE are vulnerable to standard-compliant entropy downgrade attacks. In particular, we show how an attacker can downgrade the entropy of any Bluetooth session key to 1 byte, and of any BLE long-term key and session key to 7 bytes. Such low entropy values enable the attacker to brute-force Bluetooth long-term keys and BLE long-term and session keys, and to break all the security guarantees promised by Bluetooth and BLE. As a result of our attacks, an attacker can decrypt all the ciphertext and inject valid ciphertext in any Bluetooth and BLE network. Our key negotiation downgrade attacks are conducted remotely, do not require access to the victims' devices, and are stealthy to the victims. As the attacks are standard-compliant, they are effective regardless of the usage of the strongest Bluetooth and BLE security modes (including Secure Connections), the Bluetooth version, and the implementation details of the devices used by the victims. We successfully attack 38 Bluetooth devices (32 unique Bluetooth chips) and 19 BLE devices from different vendors, using all the major versions of the Bluetooth standard. Finally, we present effective legacy compliant and non-legacy compliant countermeasures to mitigate our key negotiation downgrade attacks.

ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY2020