PUBLIC KEY CRYPTOSYSTEM BASED SECURITY ARCHITECTURE FOR TCP/IP NETWORKS

Abstract

Day-by-day security is becoming more critical in computer networks. TCP/IP based networks are becoming more popular and getting interconnected to Internet. In this dissertation, a security architecture is developed to provide different security services through TCP/IP protocols. The security architecture consists of Interactive Application Program, Client/Server, and Security Service modules. A security mechanism is given to provide security services. A public key cryptosystem is proposed, the security of the system relies on the difficulty of computing discrete logarithms over finite fields. Number of exponentiations required for encryption are nearly half that of required in Taher ElGamal's scheme. The size of the ciphertext produced is also nearly half that of produced by Taher ElGamal's scheme. A security protocol is also proposed for authentication and key agreement between peer entities. Fast algorithms are presented to improve the execution speed of public key cryptosystems.