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Special Forums Cybersecurity Where does Ciphering & Encryption occur? Post 302880598 by jim mcnamara on Friday 20th of December 2013 11:37:22 PM
Old 12-21-2013
They are algorithmic, and are completely free and open. All ciphers depend on mathematical difficulty (long long long computation to decode, as in years), not secrecy.
Any cipher that depends on a "secret" algorithm is practically guaranteed to be garbage. Any dependable cipher that is commonly used has had mathematicians and computer scientists pound on it for years. AES128, RSA, DES3, etc., all went thru this process.

After a while, someone publishes a method to speed up cracking the cipher. It gets dropped from favor, and new ones are tested and tested. RSA is in that boat.

The goal of ciphers is perfect forward secrecy. Meaning every one knows the rules and how the computation works, but doing the computations could take literally forever.

Hashes are different. Passwords are hashed. These depend on being able to enter some characters on a keyboard and getting the particular hash (string of numbers) that is saved as the hash. One of the reasons /etc/shadow has 400 permissions is: if you know the hash you can use trial and error to get a collision (an accidental hash) that matches the saved hash. And then break in. This is a case where some secrecy adds to security. MD5 is a hash that someone has shown how to match a known hashed result. Takes a big computer time to do it, bu it is at least slightly feasible. So MD5 is going out of favor.

ssh encrypts all connections with block ciphers. As a sysadmin you get to choose one of usually a dozen block ciphers. By default the system automatically changes the cipher's key every hour.

There may not be a best cipher every time. If you always send AES128, and the bad guys figure that out it becomes very, very slightly possible to crack it. Meaning some published result shows how to launch an attack with a smal but measurable possibility of breaking it. Part of encryption is to block data with junk and to change ciphers periodically. Places the odds in our favor.
 

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SSL_CTX_set_cipher_list(3)					      OpenSSL						SSL_CTX_set_cipher_list(3)

NAME
SSL_CTX_set_cipher_list, SSL_set_cipher_list - choose list of available SSL_CIPHERs SYNOPSIS
#include <openssl/ssl.h> int SSL_CTX_set_cipher_list(SSL_CTX *ctx, const char *str); int SSL_set_cipher_list(SSL *ssl, const char *str); DESCRIPTION
SSL_CTX_set_cipher_list() sets the list of available ciphers for ctx using the control string str. The format of the string is described in ciphers(1). The list of ciphers is inherited by all ssl objects created from ctx. SSL_set_cipher_list() sets the list of ciphers only for ssl. NOTES
The control string str should be universally usable and not depend on details of the library configuration (ciphers compiled in). Thus no syntax checking takes place. Items that are not recognized, because the corresponding ciphers are not compiled in or because they are mistyped, are simply ignored. Failure is only flagged if no ciphers could be collected at all. It should be noted, that inclusion of a cipher to be used into the list is a necessary condition. On the client side, the inclusion into the list is also sufficient. On the server side, additional restrictions apply. All ciphers have additional requirements. ADH ciphers don't need a certificate, but DH-parameters must have been set. All other ciphers need a corresponding certificate and key. A RSA cipher can only be chosen, when a RSA certificate is available. RSA export ciphers with a keylength of 512 bits for the RSA key require a temporary 512 bit RSA key, as typically the supplied key has a length of 1024 bit (see SSL_CTX_set_tmp_rsa_callback(3)). RSA ciphers using EDH need a certificate and key and additional DH-parameters (see SSL_CTX_set_tmp_dh_callback(3)). A DSA cipher can only be chosen, when a DSA certificate is available. DSA ciphers always use DH key exchange and therefore need DH- parameters (see SSL_CTX_set_tmp_dh_callback(3)). When these conditions are not met for any cipher in the list (e.g. a client only supports export RSA ciphers with a asymmetric key length of 512 bits and the server is not configured to use temporary RSA keys), the "no shared cipher" (SSL_R_NO_SHARED_CIPHER) error is generated and the handshake will fail. RETURN VALUES
SSL_CTX_set_cipher_list() and SSL_set_cipher_list() return 1 if any cipher could be selected and 0 on complete failure. SEE ALSO
ssl(3), SSL_get_ciphers(3), SSL_CTX_use_certificate(3), SSL_CTX_set_tmp_rsa_callback(3), SSL_CTX_set_tmp_dh_callback(3), ciphers(1) 0.9.8 2009-04-03 SSL_CTX_set_cipher_list(3)
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