CS 361S

Overview of
Public-Key Cryptography

Vitaly Shmatikov

slide 1
Reading Assignment
 Kaufman 6.1-6

slide 2
 Public-Key Cryptography
public key

public key ? private key

Alice
Bob
Given: Everybody knows Bob’s public key
- How is this achieved in practice?
Only Bob knows the corresponding private key
Goals: 1. Alice wants to send a message that
only Bob can read
2. Bob wants to send a message that
only Bob could have written slide 3
Applications of Public-Key Crypto
 Encryption for confidentiality
• Anyone can encrypt a message
– With symmetric crypto, must know the secret key to encrypt
• Only someone who knows the private key can decrypt
• Secret keys are only stored in one place
 Digital signatures for authentication
• Only someone who knows the private key can sign
 Session key establishment
• Exchange messages to create a secret session key
• Then switch to symmetric cryptography (why?)
slide 4
Public-Key Encryption
 Key generation: computationally easy to generate
a pair (public key PK, private key SK)
 Encryption: given plaintext M and public key PK,
easy to compute ciphertext C=EPK(M)
 Decryption: given ciphertext C=EPK(M) and private
key SK, easy to compute plaintext M
• Infeasible to learn anything about M from C without SK
• Trapdoor function: Decrypt(SK,Encrypt(PK,M))=M

slide 5
Some Number Theory Facts
 Euler totient function (n) where n1 is the
number of integers in the [1,n] interval that are
relatively prime to n
• Two numbers are relatively prime if their
greatest common divisor (gcd) is 1
 Euler’s theorem:
if aZn*, then a(n)  1 mod n
 Special case: Fermat’s Little Theorem
if p is prime and gcd(a,p)=1, then ap-1  1 mod p

slide 6
RSA Cryptosystem
 Key generation:
[Rivest, Shamir, Adleman 1977]
• Generate large primes p, q
– At least 2048 bits each… need primality testing!
• Compute n=pq
– Note that (n)=(p-1)(q-1)
• Choose small e, relatively prime to (n)
– Typically, e=3 (may be vulnerable) or e=216+1=65537 (why?)
• Compute unique d such that ed  1 mod (n)
• Public key = (e,n); private key = d
 Encryption of m: c = me mod n
 Decryption of c: cd mod n = (me)d mod n = m
slide 7
Why RSA Decryption Works
 ed  1 mod (n)
 Thus ed = 1+k(n) = 1+k(p-1)(q-1) for some k
 If gcd(m,p)=1, then by Fermat’s Little Theorem,
mp-1  1 mod p
 Raise both sides to the power k(q-1) and multiply
by m, obtaining m1+k(p-1)(q-1)  m mod p
 Thus med  m mod p
 By the same argument, med  m mod q
 Since p and q are distinct primes and pq=n,
med  m mod n slide 8
Why Is RSA Secure?
 RSA problem: given c, n=pq, and
e such that gcd(e,(p-1)(q-1))=1,
find m such that me=c mod n
• In other words, recover m from ciphertext c and public
key (n,e) by taking eth root of c modulo n
• There is no known efficient algorithm for doing this
 Factoring problem: given positive integer n, find
primes p1, …, pk such that n=p1e1p2e2…pkek
 If factoring is easy, then RSA problem is easy, but
may be possible to break RSA without factoring n
slide 9
“Textbook” RSA Is Bad Encryption
 Deterministic
• Attacker can guess plaintext, compute ciphertext, and
compare for equality
• If messages are from a small set (for example, yes/no),
can build a table of corresponding ciphertexts
 Can tamper with encrypted messages
• Take an encrypted auction bid c and submit
c(101/100)e mod n instead
 Does not provide semantic security (security
against chosen-plaintext attacks)
slide 10
Integrity in RSA Encryption
 “Textbook” RSA does not provide integrity
• Given encryptions of m1 and m2, attacker can create
encryption of m1m2
– (m1e)  (m2e) mod n  (m1m2)e mod n
• Attacker can convert m into mk without decrypting
– (me)k mod n  (mk)e mod n
 In practice, OAEP is used: instead of encrypting
M, encrypt MG(r) ; rH(MG(r))
• r is random and fresh, G and H are hash functions
• Resulting encryption is plaintext-aware: infeasible to
compute a valid encryption without knowing plaintext
– … if hash functions are “good” and RSA problem is hard slide 11
 Digital Signatures: Basic Idea
public key

public key ? private key

Alice Bob

Given: Everybody knows Bob’s public key

Only Bob knows the corresponding private key

Goal: Bob sends a “digitally signed” message

1. To compute a signature, must know the private key
2. To verify a signature, only the public key is needed
slide 12
RSA Signatures
 Public key is (n,e), private key is d
 To sign message m: s = hash(m)d mod n
• Signing and decryption are the same mathematical
operation in RSA
 To verify signature s on message m:
se mod n = (hash(m)d)e mod n = hash(m)
• Verification and encryption are the same mathematical
operation in RSA
 Message must be hashed and padded (why?)

slide 13
Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA)
 U.S. government standard (1991-94)
• Modification of the ElGamal signature scheme (1985)
 Key generation:
• Generate large primes p, q such that q divides p-1
– 2159 < q < 2160, 2511+64t < p < 2512+64t where 0t8
• Select hZp* and compute g=h(p-1)/q mod p
• Select random x such 1xq-1, compute y=gx mod p
 Public key: (p, q, g, gx mod p), private key: x
 Security of DSA requires hardness of discrete log
• If one can take discrete logarithms, then can extract x
(private key) from gx mod p (public key) slide 14
 DSA: Signing a Message

r = (gk mod p) mod q

Private key

Random secret (r,s) is the

between 0 and q signature on M

Message

Hash function
(SHA-1) s = k-1(H(M)+xr) mod q
slide 15
 DSA: Verifying a Signature
Public key

Compute
Message (gH(M’)w  yr’w mod q mod p) mod q

Signature

w = s’-1 mod q
If they match, signature is valid

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Why DSA Verification Works
 If (r,s) is a valid signature, then
r  (gk mod p) mod q ; s  k-1(H(M)+xr) mod q
 Thus H(M)  -xr+ks mod q
 Multiply both sides by w=s-1 mod q
 H(M)w + xrw  k mod q
 Exponentiate g to both sides
 (gH(M)w + xrw  gk) mod p mod q
 In a valid signature, gk mod p mod q = r, gx mod p = y
 Verify gH(M)wyrw  r mod p mod q

slide 17
Security of DSA
 Can’t create a valid signature without private key
 Can’t change or tamper with signed message
 If the same message is signed twice, signatures
are different
• Each signature is based in part on random secret k
 Secret k must be different for each signature!
• If k is leaked or if two messages re-use the same k,
attacker can recover secret key x and forge any
signature from then on

slide 18
PS3 Epic Fail
 Sony uses ECDSA algorithm to sign authorized
software for Playstation 3
• Basically, DSA based on elliptic curves
… with the same random value in every signature
 Trivial to extract master signing key and sign any
homebrew software – perfect “jailbreak” for PS3
 Announced by George “Geohot” Hotz
and Fail0verflow team in Dec 2010

Q: Why didn’t Sony just revoke the key?

slide 19
 Diffie-Hellman Protocol
 Alice and Bob never met and share no secrets
 Public info: p and g
• p is a large prime number, g is a generator of Zp*
– Zp*={1, 2 … p-1}; aZp* i such that a=gi mod p

Pick secret, random X Pick secret, random Y

gx mod p

gy mod p
Alice Bob

Compute k=(gy)x=gxy mod p Compute k=(gx)y=gxy mod p

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Why Is Diffie-Hellman Secure?
 Discrete Logarithm (DL) problem:
given gx mod p, it’s hard to extract x
• There is no known efficient algorithm for doing this
• This is not enough for Diffie-Hellman to be secure!
 Computational Diffie-Hellman (CDH) problem:
given gx and gy, it’s hard to compute gxy mod p
• … unless you know x or y, in which case it’s easy
 Decisional Diffie-Hellman (DDH) problem:
given gx and gy, it’s hard to tell the difference
between gxy mod p and gr mod p where r is random
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Properties of Diffie-Hellman
 Assuming DDH problem is hard, Diffie-Hellman
protocol is a secure key establishment protocol
against passive attackers
• Eavesdropper can’t tell the difference between the
established key and a random value
• Can use the new key for symmetric cryptography
 Basic Diffie-Hellman protocol does not provide
authentication
• IPsec combines Diffie-Hellman with signatures, anti-DoS
cookies, etc.

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Advantages of Public-Key Crypto
 Confidentiality without shared secrets
• Very useful in open environments
• Can use this for key establishment, avoiding the
“chicken-or-egg” problem
– With symmetric crypto, two parties must share a secret before
they can exchange secret messages
 Authentication without shared secrets
 Encryption keys are public, but must be sure that
Alice’s public key is really her public key
• This is a hard problem… Often solved using public-key
certificates
slide 23
Disadvantages of Public-Key Crypto
 Calculations are 2-3 orders of magnitude slower
• Modular exponentiation is an expensive computation
• Typical usage: use public-key cryptography to establish
a shared secret, then switch to symmetric crypto
– SSL, IPsec, most other systems based on public crypto
 Keys are longer
• 2048 bits (RSA) rather than 128 bits (AES)
 Relies on unproven number-theoretic assumptions
• Factoring, RSA problem, discrete logarithm problem,
decisional Diffie-Hellman problem…

slide 24