Researchers develop a programme to find cipher vulnerabilities
2021-04-23
(Press-News.org) Anastasia Malashina, a doctoral student at HSE University, has proposed a new method to assess vulnerabilities in encryption systems, which is based on a brute-force search of possible options of symbol deciphering. The algorithm was also implemented in a programme, which can be used to find vulnerabilities in ciphers. The results of the study were published in a paper 'Software development for the study of natural language characteristics'.
Most of online messages are sent in encrypted form since open communication channels are not protected from data interception. Messengers, cloud services, banking systems--all of these need to be protected from data breaches. The problem of data encryption is one of the main issues for cryptographers.
The problem of cipher vulnerability search is always a relevant one. To avoid hacks, it is necessary to reinforce the cipher protection from leaks and to test encryption systems for vulnerabilities.
All ciphers can be split into two big classes: block ciphers and stream ciphers. Stream data has a big advantage: they provide an acceptable speed of information transmission, suitable for images and videos.
Stream ciphering is based on a combination of data with random sequencing on a special algorithm. Special keys are used for this kind of ciphering. There are many requirements to the keys, so that the data coded with their use can be produced and stored. Meanwhile, it is not always possible to ensure that a reliable key is used. That's why stream ciphering systems need to be pre-tested for vulnerabilities.
'I was interested in not only suggesting an algorithm that is able to detect the initial text of a transmitted message, but to find opportunities to restore the text both theoretically and practically in a direct way, without finding the key,' said Anastasia Malashina.
To find vulnerabilities, she used a method that helps assess the possibility of restoring separate parts of a message without a key, in case a vulnerable cipher is used or there is a leak in the communication channel.
The algorithm uses information about possible options for each of the ciphered symbols in the initial message and brutally searches the values for all the other symbols. In case the initial cipher has a vulnerability, this method helps detect it.
The suggested algorithm was implemented in a special programme, part of which has recently been patented. This programme helps assess encryption systems' reliability and breach risks in case of data leaks.
'During my study, I looked at a corpus of social-political texts, and an open corpus of Russian language. A statistical analysis of dictionaries helped me assess the entropy of texts, for which I later assessed the possibility of partial deciphering. Furthermore, corpus-based dictionaries are used in the experimental part of the study to implement a dictionary-based attack. Similar results for the English language were reached based on the iWeb corpus,' said Malashina.
INFORMATION:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-04-23
A breakthrough astrophysics code, named Octo-Tiger, simulates the evolution of self-gravitating and rotating systems of arbitrary geometry using adaptive mesh refinement and a new method to parallelize the code to achieve superior speeds.
This new code to model stellar collisions is more expeditious than the established code used for numerical simulations. The research came from a unique collaboration between experimental computer scientists and astrophysicists in the Louisiana State University Department of Physics & Astronomy, the LSU Center for Computation & Technology, Indiana University Kokomo and Macquarie University, Australia, culminating in over of a year of benchmark testing and scientific simulations, supported by multiple NSF grants, ...
2021-04-23
Fentanyl, oxycodone, morphine--these substances are familiar to many as a source of both pain relief and the cause of a painful epidemic of addiction and death.
Scientists have attempted for years to balance the potent pain-relieving properties of opioids with their numerous negative side effects--with mostly mixed results.
Work by John Traynor, Ph.D., and Andrew Alt, Ph.D., and their team at the University of Michigan Edward F. Domino Research Center, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, seeks to side-step these problems by harnessing the body's own ability to block pain.
All opioid drugs--from poppy-derived opium to heroin--work on receptors that are naturally present in the brain and elsewhere in the body. One such receptor, the mu-opioid receptor, ...
2021-04-23
LEBANON, NH - Researchers at Dartmouth's and Dartmouth-Hitchcock's Norris Cotton Cancer Center (NCCC) hope to make estrogen therapy a more accessible treatment option for breast cancer patients who could benefit from it. Anti-estrogen treatments, which block growth signals from estrogen receptors (ER) in tumors, are effective treatments for ER+ breast cancer. But it is common for breast tumors to become resistant to anti-estrogen treatments over time. The research team, led by molecular biologist Todd Miller, PhD, and Nicole Traphagen, a PhD candidate in the Miller Laboratory, found that in mice, cycling between estrogen treatment and anti-estrogen treatment at a specific point in time can dramatically increase ...
2021-04-23
FRANKFURT. Originally, oxygen radicals - reactive oxygen species, or ROS for short - were considered to be exclusively harmful in the body. They are produced, for example, by smoking or UV radiation. Because of their high reactivity, they can damage many important molecules in cells, including the hereditary molecule DNA. As a result, there is a risk of inflammatory reactions and the degeneration of affected cells into cancer cells.
Because of their damaging effect, however, ROS are also deliberately produced by the body, for example by immune or lung epithelial cells, which destroy invading bacteria and viruses with ROS. This requires relatively high ROS concentrations. In low concentrations, on the ...
2021-04-23
Copper remains one of the single most ubiquitous metals in everyday life. As a conductor of heat and electricity, it is utilized in wires, roofing and plumbing, as well as a catalyst for petrochemical plants, solar and electrical conductors and for a wide range of energy related applications. Subsequently, any method to harvest more of the valuable commodity proves a useful endeavor.
Debora Rodrigues, Ezekiel Cullen Professor of Engineering at the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering, in collaboration with Francisco C. Robles Hernandez, ...
2021-04-23
Anyone with children knows that while controlling one child can be hard, controlling many at once can be nearly impossible. Getting swarms of robots to work collectively can be equally challenging, unless researchers carefully choreograph their interactions -- like planes in formation -- using increasingly sophisticated components and algorithms. But what can be reliably accomplished when the robots on hand are simple, inconsistent, and lack sophisticated programming for coordinated behavior?
A team of researchers led by Dana Randall, ADVANCE Professor of Computing and Daniel Goldman, Dunn Family Professor of Physics, both at Georgia Institute of Technology, sought to show that ...
2021-04-23
Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in America and causes about 30% of all cancer deaths. That's why researchers with the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center wanted to study the impact of a California law passed in 2016 that raised the tobacco sales age from 18 to 21. Their new study published in Preventive Medicine examines smoking behavior after the state implemented one of the first tobacco 21 (T21) policies.
The study, conducted by UC Davis researchers Melanie Dove, Susan Stewart and Elisa Tong, looked at smoking patterns before and after the law passed and compared California and other states without a T21 policy. The data was from the 2012-2019 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.
"Most adult tobacco users start smoking ...
2021-04-23
Batteries are a part of everyday modern life, powering everything from laptops, phones and robot vacuums to hearing aids, pacemakers and even electric cars. But these batteries potentially pose safety and environmental risks.
In a study recently published in Cell Reports Physical Science, researchers at Texas A&M University investigated the components of a different kind of battery -- a metal-free, water-based battery -- which would reduce the flammable nature of standard batteries and decrease the number of metal elements used in their production.
Most batteries are ...
2021-04-23
Researchers led by Katsunori Tanaka and Kenward Vong at the RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research (CPR) in Japan have demonstrated that tumor growth can be reduced by therapy that tags cancer cells with different therapeutic molecules. In one case, the group was able to prevent tumors from forming in mice by targeting cancer cells with a compound that makes it difficult for the cells to clump together and form tumors. For tumors that already existed, they targeted cancer cells with toxic compounds that destroyed them. This study was published on April 23 in Science Advances.
One of the major problems with current cancer treatments is that their effects are not limited to cancerous cells in ...
2021-04-23
An international team of researchers led by the University of Bergen has uncovered how organisms from crops to corals may avoid deadly DNA damage during evolution.
Our cells, and those of animals, plants and fungi, contain compartments that produce chemical fuel. These compartments contain their own DNA, which stores instructions for important cellular machinery. But this so-called oDNA (organelle DNA) can become mutated, corrupting the instructions and preventing cells making enough energy.
In humans and some other animals, a process called the "bottleneck" allows some offspring to inherit less mutated oDNA. This process needs mothers' egg cells to develop early, like in humans, where a human girl is born with all ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Researchers develop a programme to find cipher vulnerabilities
