Security in Distributed Systems
Stub. Security mechanisms and common attacks; secret-key cryptosystems (DES/3DES/AES, one-time pad, stream ciphers, steganography); public-key cryptosystems (RSA, ElGamal); digital signatures and hashing; elliptic curve cryptography; authentication servers and digital certificates; case studies (Kerberos, PGP, SSL); VPNs and firewalls; and secret sharing.
The cryptographic and protocol toolkit that secures communication and authentication across an untrusted network. Covers the two cryptosystem families (secret-key, with its confusion/diffusion design principle and concrete ciphers; public-key, with RSA and ElGamal as the working examples) and what each buys you (digital signatures, which differ depending on which family produces them), hashing and the birthday-attack bound on collision resistance, and elliptic-curve cryptography as a smaller-key-size alternative to RSA. Authentication servers and digital certificates are the infrastructure that makes public/secret keys usable at scale, worked through in three real systems (Kerberos, PGP, SSL), with VPNs/firewalls and secret sharing as further practical mechanisms.
Outline (TODO — flesh out each)
- Security mechanisms; common security attacks
- Encryption; secret-key cryptosystems — confusion/diffusion, DES, 3DES, AES, one-time pad, stream ciphers, steganography
- Public-key cryptosystems — RSA, ElGamal
- Digital signatures — in secret-key and public-key systems
- Hashing algorithms — the birthday attack
- Elliptic curve cryptography
- Authentication servers; digital certificates
- Case studies: Kerberos, PGP, SSL
- VPNs and firewalls
- Sharing a secret