Nt1310 Unit 4 Analysis

Words: 515
Pages: 3

1.[2 marks] In core task #1, you encrypted using AES-CBC with a fixed IV. What are the benefits of using a fixed IV? What are the drawbacks?

The benefits of using fixed IV are to prevent the repetiton of encrypted messages become similar with the ciphertext.
Besides, the drawbacks of using fixed IV are the failure not only happen in one block but the another block too because to create the another block it need the first block and the attacker will using dictionary attack if he have IV and ciphertext.

2. [3 marks] Compare the size of the output in the RC4 starter task versus each task you implemented. Explain why the sizes are

The comparison of size of output for:
i)RC4 with passsword

RC4 generates a pseudorandom stream of bits(a keystream).To generate the
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ii)AES-CBC with password and fixed IV

AES as a block cipher does not change the size.The input size is always the output size.
But,AES being a bock cipher,it requires the input to be multiple of block size(16 bytes).For this,padding scheme are used like the popular PKCS5.So,the answer is that the size of your encrypted data depends on the padding scheme used.But,at the same time all known padding schemes will round up to the next module 16 size(size AES has a 16 bytes block size).

3. [5 marks] For one of the add-on tasks that you did, explain any design choices you made, explain what security properties the scheme should have, and explain why you think your implementation provides the security properties it is supposed to.
A good write up will include conceptual description of the various cryptographic operations you used and how they connect