dissertation on encryption

Networking/Security Forums -> Cryptographic Software and Hardware

Author: sheryl89 PostPosted: Fri Feb 26, 2010 5:07 pm    Post subject: dissertation on encryption
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Hey all, Im new to this and need some serious help!! Would be very grateful if anyone can. Ok...I am doing a BSc(Hons) in Computer networking and doing my dissertation at the moment. My dissertation is on network data security but my main focus is encryption. I need some help though. I am looking for some good encryption software to test. I know there is loads out there but I just aint exactly sure on what to do with it to test it. How would you test these packages apart from simply creating a file and encrypting it? Also are there any packages anyone can recommend or any sites? I have a presentation on Tuesday 2nd March also and I really need to have something to talk about and have some results. I hope someone can help. Thanks.

Author: TDSincLocation: Florida PostPosted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 3:23 am    Post subject: Crypt testing?
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Hi Sheryl,

Some good encryption programs you can consider are PGP, RSA, and TrueCrypt. But you need to be more specific as to what you mean by 'testing', before I can offer any useful advise. For instance, do you need to:

1. test which programs run most economically? (Usually Elliptic Curve applications tend to be more economical).

2. test which programs have been around the longest, so seem to be most reliable? (both PGP and RSA would do)

3. Most secure? This gets very subtle -- it's not just a matter of key size, but depends on many other factors (for instance: RNG quality, key entropy, symmetric, asymmetric, or hybrid encryption)

Author: sheryl89 PostPosted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 1:51 pm    Post subject: cryptic testing
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Hi, thanks very much for getting back to me.

I have considered RSA and PGP yes, and I need to somehow test them. Just really aint sure at all. Last week all I did was download a few encryption folder packages and compared the performance of them. This is just basic.

To be honest, I dont know what I mean with testing, I just need some results to analyse. I mean how would I test PGP and RSA? I have hard of truecrypt too, but how would I test this? I only have till the end of april to produce some more test results and I need to do it asap.

I found finecrypt and used a hex neo editor with it last week to see how plaintext was encrypted into ciphertext but I honestly feel confused on what exactly Ive to do.

I hope you can help. Thanks.

Author: TDSincLocation: Florida PostPosted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 6:51 pm    Post subject:
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Well, you might ask your adviser for some direction on this. Typically, in my experience, testing can mean showing that the algorithm in question cannot be cracked with any more efficiency than a 'brute-force-attack' (which, typically should take some ridiculously long time -- a thousand years or more). This involves some fairly involved math. On the other hand, perhaps all you need to show by 'test' is how 'user friendly' these various applications are (RSA, PGP, etc.), and this is more a matter of your subjective opinion.

Author: sheryl89 PostPosted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 2:29 pm    Post subject: cryptic testing
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Yeah, do you recommend any pgp or rsa programs I can test though? I mean it is only an honours project, not as if its a PHd and maybe thats where the math would be involved, I dont have to go that far with maths, I have got bruce schneirs applied cryptography book and boy! that has some amount of maths in it.

Author: TDSincLocation: Florida PostPosted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 5:12 pm    Post subject: Pgp
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Sure, just go to:

http://www.pgp.com/products/desktop_email/index.html

Should work for you.

Author: sheryl89 PostPosted: Fri Mar 12, 2010 11:22 pm    Post subject: Pgp
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So when I download PGP, how exactly can I test and analyse this for my project? any ideas? Is it just a case of sending an encrypted email and decrypting it or is there more to it?

Cheers.



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