Question 4
5
CE708-7-AU
Considering digital envelopes, message authentication and digital signatures, answer parts (a),
(b) and (c). The general approach of a digital envelope is shown in Figure 4.1. Suppose Bob
wishes to send a confidential message to Alice, but they do not share a symmetric secret key.
Bob does the following:
1. Prepare a message.
2. Generate a random symmetric key that will be used this one time only.
3. Encrypt that message using symmetric encryption with a one-time key.
4. Encrypt the one-time key using public-key encryption with Alice's public key.
5. Attach the encrypted one-time key to the encrypted message and send it to Alice.
(a) Discuss the benefits of this approach.
[7%]
(b) Discuss what algorithms could provide the most computationally secure encryption for the [7%]
digital envelope.
(c) Construct a figure similar to Figure 4.1 that includes a digital signature to authenticate the [7%]
message in the digital envelope.