Book Image

TLS Cryptography In-Depth

By : Dr. Paul Duplys, Dr. Roland Schmitz
Book Image

TLS Cryptography In-Depth

By: Dr. Paul Duplys, Dr. Roland Schmitz

Overview of this book

TLS is the most widely used cryptographic protocol today, enabling e-commerce, online banking, and secure online communication. Written by Dr. Paul Duplys, Security, Privacy & Safety Research Lead at Bosch, and Dr. Roland Schmitz, Internet Security Professor at Stuttgart Media University, this book will help you gain a deep understanding of how and why TLS works, how past attacks on TLS were possible, and how vulnerabilities that enabled them were addressed in the latest TLS version 1.3. By exploring the inner workings of TLS, you’ll be able to configure it and use it more securely. Starting with the basic concepts, you’ll be led step by step through the world of modern cryptography, guided by the TLS protocol. As you advance, you’ll be learning about the necessary mathematical concepts from scratch. Topics such as public-key cryptography based on elliptic curves will be explained with a view on real-world applications in TLS. With easy-to-understand concepts, you’ll find out how secret keys are generated and exchanged in TLS, and how they are used to creating a secure channel between a client and a server. By the end of this book, you’ll have the knowledge to configure TLS servers securely. Moreover, you’ll have gained a deep knowledge of the cryptographic primitives that make up TLS.
Table of Contents (30 chapters)
1
Part I Getting Started
8
Part II Shaking Hands
16
Part III Off the Record
22
Part IV Bleeding Hearts and Biting Poodles
27
Bibliography
28
Index

3.4 Key length

The key space 𝒦 is large but finite. So, in principle, it is possible to search through it completely until the correct key K has been found. Such an attack is called a brute-force attack. Whether a brute-force attack is possible within a reasonable time frame, that is, within the time span the protected information is valuable for Eve, depends not only on the size of the key space but also on the speed of the latest computing technology and the resources Eve has at her disposal (this is part of the attacker model). This means key recommendations can (and do) vary over time.

For reasons of cost and usability, you should not always suppose the strongest possible attacker is after you. Thinking about the means an attacker realistically has at his or her disposal is part of the so-called attacker model in IT security. After that, you try to make your system secure against the specific type of attacker you have defined in your attacker model. When it comes to key length...