Some New Mathematical Tools in Cryptology

In this paper some new mathematical technique used in the design and analysis of cipher systems have been reviewed. Firstly, some modern cryptosystems like stream ciphers, permutation-based systems and public key encryption systems are described and the mathematical tools used in their design have been outlined. Special emphasis has been laid on the problems related to application of computational complexity to cryptosystems. Recent work on the design of the systems based on a combined encryption and coding for error correction has also been reviewed. Some recent system-oriented techniques of cryptanalysis have been discussed. It has been brought out that with the increase in the complexity of the cryptosystems it is necessary to apply some statistical and classification techniques for the purpose of identifying a cryptosystem as also for classification of the total key set into smaller classes. Finally, some very recent work on the application of artificial intelligence technique in cryptography and cryptanalysis has been mentioned

Complexity Results for Equistable Graphs and Related Classes

The class of equistable graphs is defined by the existence of a cost structure on the vertices such that the maximal stable sets are characterized by their costs. This graph class, not contained in any nontrivial hereditary class, has so far been studied mostly from a structural point of view; characterizations and polynomial time recognition algorithms have been obtained for special cases. We focus on complexity issues for equistable graphs and related classes. We describe a simple pseudo-polynomial-time dynamic programming algorithm to solve the maximum weight stable set problem along with the weighted independent domination problem in some classes of graphs, including equistable graphs. Our results are obtained within the wider context of Boolean optimization; corresponding hardness results are also provided. More specifically, we show that the above problems are APX-hard for equistable graphs and that it is co-NP-complete to determine whether a given cost function on the vertices of a graph defines an equistable cost structure of that graph.Germany. Federal Ministry of Education and ResearchAlexander von Humboldt-Stiftung (Sofja Kovalevskaja Award 2004

Reduction algorithms for the cryptanalysis of lattice based asymmetrical cryptosystems

Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Computer Engineering, Izmir, 2008Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 79-91)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishxi, 119 leavesThe theory of lattices has attracted a great deal of attention in cryptology in recent years. Several cryptosystems are constructed based on the hardness of the lattice problems such as the shortest vector problem and the closest vector problem. The aim of this thesis is to study the most commonly used lattice basis reduction algorithms, namely Lenstra Lenstra Lovasz (LLL) and Block Kolmogorov Zolotarev (BKZ) algorithms, which are utilized to approximately solve the mentioned lattice based problems.Furthermore, the most popular variants of these algorithms in practice are evaluated experimentally by varying the common reduction parameter delta in order to propose some practical assessments about the effect of this parameter on the process of basis reduction.These kind of practical assessments are believed to have non-negligible impact on the theory of lattice reduction, and so the cryptanalysis of lattice cryptosystems, due to thefact that the contemporary nature of the reduction process is mainly controlled by theheuristics

Enhancement of Nth degree truncated polynomial ring for improving decryption failure

Nth Degree Truncated Polynomial (NTRU) is a public key cryptosystem constructed in a polynomial ring with integer coefficients that is based on three main key integer parameters N; p and q. However, decryption failure of validly created ciphertexts may occur, at which point the encrypted message is discarded and the sender re-encrypts the messages using different parameters. This may leak information about the private key of the recipient thereby making it vulnerable to attacks. Due to this, the study focused on reduction or elimination of decryption failure through several solutions. The study began with an experimental evaluation of NTRU parameters and existing selection criteria by uniform quartile random sampling without replacement in order to identify the most influential parameter(s) for decryption failure, and thus developed a predictive parameter selection model with the aid of machine learning. Subsequently, an improved NTRU modular inverse algorithm was developed following an exploratory evaluation of alternative modular inverse algorithms in terms of probability of invertibility, speed of inversion and computational complexity. Finally, several alternative algebraic ring structures were evaluated in terms of simplification of multiplication, modular inversion, one-way function properties and security analysis for NTRU variant formulation. The study showed that the private key f and large prime q were the most influential parameters in decryption failure. Firstly, an extended parameter selection criteria specifying that the private polynomial f should be selected such that f(1) = 1, number of 1 coefficients should be one more or one less than -1 coefficients, which doubles the range of invertible polynomials thereby doubling the presented key space. Furthermore, selecting q 2:5754 f(1)+83:9038 gave an appropriate size q with the least size required for successful message decryption, resulting in a 33.05% reduction of the public key size. Secondly, an improved modular inverse algorithm was developed using the least squares method of finding a generalized inverse applying homomorphism of ring R and an (N x N) circulant matrix with integer coefficients. This ensured inversion for selected polynomial f except for binary polynomial having all 1 coefficients. This resulted in an increase of 48% to 51% whereby the number of invertible polynomials enlarged the key space and consequently improved security. Finally, an NTRU variant based on the ring of integers, Integer TRUncated ring (ITRU) was developed to address the invertiblity problem of key generation which causes decryption failure. Based on this analysis, inversion is guaranteed, and less pre-computation is required. Besides, a lower key generation computational complexity of O(N2) compared to O(N2(log2p+log2q)) for NTRU as well as a public key size that is 38% to 53% smaller, and a message expansion factor that is 2 to15 times larger than that of NTRU enhanced message security were obtained

Average-Case Complexity

We survey the average-case complexity of problems in NP. We discuss various notions of good-on-average algorithms, and present completeness results due to Impagliazzo and Levin. Such completeness results establish the fact that if a certain specific (but somewhat artificial) NP problem is easy-on-average with respect to the uniform distribution, then all problems in NP are easy-on-average with respect to all samplable distributions. Applying the theory to natural distributional problems remain an outstanding open question. We review some natural distributional problems whose average-case complexity is of particular interest and that do not yet fit into this theory. A major open question whether the existence of hard-on-average problems in NP can be based on the P$\neq$NP assumption or on related worst-case assumptions. We review negative results showing that certain proof techniques cannot prove such a result. While the relation between worst-case and average-case complexity for general NP problems remains open, there has been progress in understanding the relation between different ``degrees'' of average-case complexity. We discuss some of these ``hardness amplification'' results