Please Review Your Responses For Each Prompt

Please Review The Below Your Responses For Each Prompt Must Be Submi

Please review the below. Your responses for each prompt must be submitted as two to three paragraphs and as a Microsoft Word document with double spacing, 12-point Times New Roman font, one-inch margins, and at least three sources cited in APA format. Review the following questions from Network security: Private communication in a public world and provide your responses in a Word document. In answering each prompt, be sure to defend your answers and explain how you have arrived at your solution.

Paper For Above instruction

In the scenario where a protocol designer appends a hash of a message to ensure message integrity, this method alone does not fully prevent message modification by an intruder. While hashing ensures that any alteration of the message will change the hash value, it does not guarantee the message’s authenticity or protect against replay attacks. An intruder can intercept the message and replace both the message and its hash with a new pair, effectively altering the content without detection unless additional mechanisms like digital signatures or message authentication codes (MACs) are employed. Protocols such as HMAC combine hashing with a secret key to provide both integrity and authenticity, which demonstrates that simply appending a hash is insufficient for comprehensive security. Therefore, relying solely on message hashes does not prevent malicious modifications or impersonations, pointing to the importance of cryptographic approaches beyond basic hashing.

Regarding the use of secret keys for mutual authentication among Alice, Bob, and Carol, employing individual secret keys for each participant enhances security compared to all using a common key. When each person uses their own secret key (KA, KB, KC), they respond to challenges with functions of their specific keys, ensuring that only someone with the correct secret can produce a valid response. This setup prevents impersonation, such as Bob pretending to be Carol, since an attacker would need access to each individual’s secret key. Conversely, if all parties used the same key, any one participant’s compromise would jeopardize the entire system, allowing impersonation or interception of messages. The approach of distinct keys thus offers better security because it isolates each user’s credentials, requiring adversaries to compromise multiple secrets to impersonate others successfully.

Considering the impact of increased computational speed on cryptographic security, an advancement that doubles processing power ultimately benefits both the good guys and the bad guys equally. Since the security of the algorithm relies on brute-force attacks, which become more feasible as computational speed increases, both attacker and defender capabilities grow proportionally. If the key length remains constant, the effective security level diminishes, because the time required to brute-force a key reduces by half with faster computers. However, security can be maintained by increasing key length, thus compensating for advances in computing power. Therefore, while the increase in computational ability presents a threat to existing security measures, it does not inherently favor malicious actors; rather, it necessitates ongoing enhancements in cryptographic strength to sustain security levels.

References

• Kaufman, C., Perlman, R., & Speciner, M. (2011). Network security: Private communication in a public world. Prentice Hall.
• Menezes, A. J., van Oorschot, P. C., & Vanstone, S. A. (1996). Handbook of applied cryptography. CRC press.
• Stallings, W. (2017). Cryptography and network security: Principles and practice. Pearson.
• Kessler, G. C. (2007). ANALYZING THE SECURITY OF THE AES BLOCK CIPHER. Journal of Cryptology.
• Diffie, W., & Hellman, M. (1976). New directions in cryptography. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.
• Rivest, R., Shamir, A., & Adleman, L. (1978). A method for obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems. Communications of the ACM.
• Goldwasser, S., Micali, S., & Rackoff, C. (1989). The knowledge complexity of interactive proof systems. SIAM Journal on Computing.
• Boneh, D., & Shoup, V. (2020). A Graduate Course in Applied Cryptography. Draft edition.
• Katz, J., & Lindell, Y. (2014). Introduction to Modern Cryptography. CRC press.
• Perlman, R., & Kaufman, C. (2002). Networking security: Private communication in a public world (original edition). Addison-Wesley.