A symmetric block cipher designed in 1993 by Bruce Schneier. Was intended as a replacement for DES. Like DES it is a 16 round Feistel working on 64bit blocks. Can have bit sizes 32bits to 448bits.
Correct Answer: B
Blowfish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowfish_(cipher) Blowfish is a symmetric-key block cipher, designed in 1993 by Bruce Schneier and included in many cipher suites and encryption products. Blowfish provides a good encryption rate in software and no effective cryptanalysis of it has been found to date. However, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) now receives more attention, and Schneier recommends Twofish for modern applications. Blowfish has a 64-bit block size and a variable key length from 32 bits up to 448 bits. It is a 16-round Feistel cipher and uses large key-dependent S-boxes. Incorrect answers: Skipjack - symmetric algorithm. Designed by NSA for the clipper chip - a chip with built in encryption. The decryption key was kept in key escrow in case law enforcement needed to decrypt data without the owner's cooperation, making it highly controversial. Uses an 80 bit key to encrypt/decrypt 64 bit data blocks. It is an unbalanced Feistel network with 32 rounds. Serpent - symmetric algorithm. Designed by Ross Anderson, Eli Biham, and Lars Knudsen. Has a block size of 128 bits. Key size is 128, 192, or 256 bits. Uses a substitution-permutation network instead of Feistel cipher. Uses 32 rounds working with a block of four 32-bit words. Each round applies one of eight 4-bit to 4-bit S-boxes 32 times in parallel. Designed so all operations can be done in parallel. MD5 - hash function. Created by Ronald Rivest. Replaced MD4. 128 bit output size, 512 bit block size, 32 bit word size, 64 rounds. Infamously compromised by Flame malware in 2012.
Question 32
This is a 128 bit hash that is specified by RFC 1321. It was designed by Ron Rivest in 1991 to replace an earlier hash function.
Correct Answer: D
MD5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5 The MD5 message-digest algorithm is a widely used hash function producing a 128-bit hash value. Although MD5 was initially designed to be used as a cryptographic hash function, it has been found to suffer from extensive vulnerabilities. It can still be used as a checksum to verify data integrity, but only against unintentional corruption. It remains suitable for other non-cryptographic purposes, for example for determining the partition for a particular key in a partitioned database. MD5 was designed by Ronald Rivest in 1991 to replace an earlier hash function MD4, and was specified in 1992 as RFC 1321. Incorrect answers: SHA1 - (Secure Hash Algorithm 1) is a cryptographic hash function which takes an input and produces a 160-bit (20-byte) hash value known as a message digest - typically rendered as a hexadecimal number, 40 digits long. It was designed by the United States National Security Agency, and is a U.S. Federal Information Processing Standard. RSA - (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) is a public-key cryptosystem that is widely used for secure data transmission. It is also one of the oldest. The acronym RSA comes from the surnames of Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman, who publicly described the algorithm in 1977. An equivalent system was developed secretly, in 1973 at GCHQ (the British signals intelligence agency), by the English mathematician Clifford Cocks. That system was declassified in 1997. SHA-256 - SHA-2 (Secure Hash Algorithm 2) is a set of cryptographic hash functions designed by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) and first published in 2001. They are built using the Merkle-Damgard structure, from a one-way compression function itself built using the Davies-Meyer structure from a specialized block cipher. SHA-2 includes significant changes from its predecessor, SHA-1. The SHA-2 family consists of six hash functions with digests (hash values) that are 224, 256, 384 or 512 bits: SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512, SHA-512/224, SHA-512/256
Question 33
Which of the following encryption algorithms relies on the inability to factor large prime numbers?
Correct Answer: A
Correct answers: RSA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_(cryptosystem) RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) is a public-key cryptosystem that is widely used for secure data transmission. It is also one of the oldest. The acronym RSA comes from the surnames of Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman, who publicly described the algorithm in 1977. An equivalent system was developed secretly, in 1973 at GCHQ (the British signals intelligence agency), by the English mathematician Clifford Cocks. That system was declassified in 1997. In a public-key cryptosystem, the encryption key is public and distinct from the decryption key, which is kept secret (private). An RSA user creates and publishes a public key based on two large prime numbers, along with an auxiliary value. The prime numbers are kept secret. Messages can be encrypted by anyone, via the public key, but can only be decoded by someone who knows the prime numbers. The security of RSA relies on the practical difficulty of factoring the product of two large prime numbers, the "factoring problem". Breaking RSA encryption is known as the RSA problem. Whether it is as difficult as the factoring problem is an open question. There are no published methods to defeat the system if a large enough key is used. Incorrect answers: EC - Elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) is an approach to public-key cryptography based on the algebraic structure of elliptic curves over finite fields. ECC allows smaller keys compared to non-EC cryptography (based on plain Galois fields) to provide equivalent security. AES - Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), also known by its original name Rijndael, is a specification for the encryption of electronic data established by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2001. AES is a subset of the Rijndael block cipher developed by two Belgian cryptographers, Vincent Rijmen and Joan Daemen, who submitted a proposal to NIST during the AES selection process. Rijndael is a family of ciphers with different key and block sizes. For AES, NIST selected three members of the Rijndael family, each with a block size of 128 bits, but three different key lengths: 128, 192 and 256 bits. MQV - (Menezes-Qu-Vanstone) is an authenticated protocol for key agreement based on the Diffie-Hellman scheme. Like other authenticated Diffie-Hellman schemes, MQV provides protection against an active attacker. The protocol can be modified to work in an arbitrary finite group, and, in particular, elliptic curve groups, where it is known as elliptic curve MQV (ECMQV).
Question 34
The greatest weakness with symmetric algorithms is _____.
Correct Answer: B
The problem of key exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetric-key_algorithm Symmetric-key algorithms are algorithms for cryptography that use the same cryptographic keys for both encryption of plaintext and decryption of ciphertext. The keys may be identical or there may be a simple transformation to go between the two keys. The keys, in practice, represent a shared secret between two or more parties that can be used to maintain a private information link. This requirement that both parties have access to the secret key is one of the main drawbacks of symmetric key encryption, in comparison to public-key encryption (also known as asymmetric key encryption).
Question 35
All of the following are key exchange protocols except for____
