Question

Please provide a detailed response to the below to include specific details and examples.

Auguste Kerchoff put forth a set of guidelines in the development of new algorithms or the evaluation of existing ones. While they are not required to be followed, they are still considered to be good advice or guidance. Please explain Kerchoff’s six principles and make a case for both following them and not following them. Please use sources to support your positions.

Answer 1

Solution:

The 6 principles of Auguste Kerchoff are listed below:-

1. The system must be practical, if not mathematically, indecipherable;
2. It should not require secrecy, and it should not be a problem if it falls into enemy hands;
3. It must be possible to communicate and remember the key without using written notes, and correspondents must be able to change or modify it at will;
4. It must be applicable to telegraph communications;
5. It must be portable, and should not require several persons to handle or operate;
6. Lastly, given the circumstances in which it is to be used, the system must be easy to use and should not be stressful to use or require its users to know and comply with a long list of rules.

Explanations:- Kerckhoffs viewed cryptography as a rival to, and a better alternative than, steganographic encoding, which was common in the nineteenth century for hiding the meaning of military messages. One problem with encoding schemes is that they rely on humanly-held secrets such as "dictionaries" which disclose for example, the secret meaning of words. Stenographic-like dictionaries, once revealed, permanently compromise a corresponding encoding system. Another problem is that the risk of exposure increases as the number of users holding the secret(s) increases.

Nineteenth-century cryptography, in contrast, used simple tables which provided for the transposition of alphanumeric characters, generally given row-column intersections which could be modified by keys which were generally short, numeric, and could be committed to human memory. The system was considered "indecipherable" because tables and keys do not convey meaning by themselves. Secret messages can be compromised only if a matching set of table, key, and message falls into enemy hands in a relevant time frame. Kerckhoffs viewed tactical messages as only having a few hours of relevance. Systems are not necessarily compromised because their components (i.e. alphanumeric character tables and keys) can be easily changed

Follows Kerchoff Principles:-  Steganographic encoding

Violates Kerchoff Principles:- Ciphers

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