Shannon and 5 Criteria of a good cipher

Sina Manavi Manavi.sina@gmail.com 03.11.2011

Claude Elwood Shannon Shannon Biography

(April 30, 1916 February 24, 2001) American mathematician, electronic engineer, and cryptographer. Graduated from MIT known as "the father of information theory.

Terminology
Plaintext: text to be protected Cipher (or cypher): algorithm for performing encryption or decryption Ciphertext: encrypted/decrypted plaintext.

5 criteria of a good cipher:

1. The amount of secrecy needed should determine the amount of labor appropriate for the encryption and decryption.
Need of more security, needs more encryption

5 criteria of a good cipher:

2. The set of keys and the enciphering algorithm should be free from complexity.

5 criteria of a good cipher:

3. The implementation of the process should be as simple as possible.

Undermining security

Complexity implementation

5 criteria of a good cipher:

4. Errors in ciphering should not propagate and cause corruption of further information in the message.
one error should not throw off the entire process

5 criteria of a good cipher:

5. The size of the enciphered text should be no larger than the text of the original message.
Longer ciphertext :

Easier detection of pattern by Cryptanalysis

More space of storage

Longer time to communicate

BUT
Shannon developed these criteria before modern digital computers. Some the concern he expressed, is not a limitation anymore. We dont need to implement a simple cipher with modern fast computers, whereas complexity of implementation has become easier

Be secure

World is not safe, be careful of your information and privacy