Additional Algebraic Attacks

Additional Algebraic Attacks

Additional algebraic attacks are listed below. Recall these attacks try to find correlations between certain elements to find weaknesses in multiple encryption cycles within the cryptosystem itself to try and yield the correct key.

Birthday Attack

The birthday paradox says that the probability that two or more people in a group of 23 share the same birthday is greater than50 percent. This paradox can be applied mathematically to attack types of hashing functions to find two messages that produce the same message digest, and this is referred to as the birthday attack against hashing algorithms. The birthday paradox shows that the probability that two messages will end up with the same hash is high even if the number of messages is considerably less than the number of hashes possible. The really strong hashing algorithms will resist, as much as possible, the possibilities that duplicate hashes will be produced. To most experts, the birthday attack is considered a type of brute force attack because the attacker keeps trying to hash messages until messages that yield the same hash are obtained. The point of the birthday attack is that it is easier to find two messages that hash to the same message digest than to match a specific message and its specific message digest.

Factoring Attack

This attack is aimed at the RSA algorithm specifically. Because that algorithm uses the product of large prime numbers to generate the public and private keys, this attack attempts to find the private key through solving the factoring of these public keys.

These are additional attacks that hackers commonly use to attack computer systems.

The dictionary attack is used most commonly against password files if a copy of the password file can be obtained by the attacker. Even though password files are one-way encrypted (the password file contains hashes, or digests of the actual passwords), it exploits the poor habits of users who choose simple passwords based on natural words.

The dictionary attack merely encrypts all of the words and different combinations of words in a dictionary and then checks whether the resulting hash matches an encrypted password stored in the password file. Rainbow tables that provide already hashed digests of known passwords and combinations can significantly aid and speed up dictionary attacks.

Attacking the Random Number Generators

This attack has been successful against certain cryptography implementations. If the random number generator used by cryptosystems is too predictable, it may give attackers the ability to guess or predict the random numbers that are critical insetting up initialization vectors in cryptography systems. With this information in hand, the attacker is much more likely to run a successful attack.

Temporary Files

Most cryptosystems need to use temporary files in storage to perform their calculations. If these files and storage locations used in architectures are not deleted and overwritten securely,they may be possibly accessed and compromised and lead an attacker to conduct successful cryptanalysis. Making sure any temporary file, or storage location, and volatile memory used by cryptosystems is securely overwritten is an important part of what the cryptosystem needs to be able to achieve.