Year

1992

Degree Name

Master of Science (Hons.)

Department

Department of Computer Science

Abstract

Cryptography has a much wider application than secrecy, such as authentication and digital signature. There are two common types of cryptographic algoritlims - symmetric and asymmetric. The Data Encryption Standaid (DES) is the first and only, publicly available cryptographic algoritlim tliat has been widely used in commercial conmiunication. The DES is a block cipher symmetric algoritlim and its design is based on the Shannon's two general principles - diffusion and confusion. With the decreased cost of hardware and a better understanding of block ciphers and cryptanalysis techniques, a number of DES-like ciphers have been proposed as the replacement for DES. One-way hashing functions are useful in implementing any digital signature schemes. A hashing function accepts a vai'iable size message M as input and outputs a fixed size representation of tlie message H(M). A number of hashing functions of fixed size or variable size message digest have been proposed. The cryptographic primitives (des, feal, loki, kliufu, and kliafre), block cipher based hashing algorithms (sbh and dbh), and key-less hashing algorithms (md4, md4x, md5 and haval) have been implemented as standard commands and C library calls for the UNIX Operating System.

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Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed in this thesis are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the University of Wollongong.