MATH 233 SPRING 2018

MIDTERM PRACTICE

Classical ciphers
• An affine-like cipher given by c ≡ αx+β (mod 26) (where c is the cipher and x is plaintext) encrypts
the plaintext bad as DBH. Find another three-letter plaintext that is encrypted as DBH by this
cipher.
• How many distinct, invertible affine ciphers are there for English? How is this related to φ(26)?
What does φ(26) represent?
• Alice and Bob are sending messages using an affine cipher. You gain access to the plain text if and
its corresponding ciphertext IZ. You then intercept the ciphertext XAP. What was the corresponding
plaintext?
• Alice and Bob are sending messages using an affine cipher, and you intercept the ciphertext LQHUH.
You gain access to the decryption machine, and when you input the ciphertext AB the machine
outputs ch. What is the plaintext corresponding to the intercepted ciphertext?
• Suppose that we know a cipher is either an affine cipher or a 2 × 2 Hill block cipher or a Vignère
cipher with a keyword of length 2. It encrypts aarons as BESSOW . (You do not have to find the
key, just give a convincing explanation of why it must be one of the ciphers or why it must not be
either of the others.)
• Suppose that we know a cipher is either an affine cipher or a 2 × 2 Hill block cipher or a Vignère
cipher with a keyword of length 2. It encrypts abba as as BBBA. (You do not have to find the key,
just give a convincing explanation of why it must be one of the ciphers or why it must not be either
of the others.)
• Suppose that we know a cipher is either an affine cipher or a Vignère cipher with a keyword of length
2. It encrypts back as EBHF . (You do not have to find the key, just give a convincing explanation
of why it must be one of the ciphers or why it must not be the other.)
• Suppose that we know that Alice and Bob are using either an affine cipher or a Vigenère cipher with
key size 2. The plaintext aqua is decrypted as XVRG. Which sort of cipher is being used? (You do
not need to find the key; just give a convincing explanation.)
• Suppose that we know that Alice and Bob are using either a Vigenère cipher with key size 2 or a
Hill cipher with a 2 × 2 key matrix. The plaintext aardvark is decrypted as AAXRVQLM. Which sort
of cipher is being used? (You do not need to find the key; just give a convincing explanation.)
• Same as above, but if the ciphertext had been CKTNXKTU.
• Suppose that we have an alphabet with two letters b and a. The frequency of b is .9 and the frequency
of a is .1. We see the ciphertext
ABABABABAA
What was the likely keyword? Explain your answer. (You may assume the keyword length is not
longer than 3.)
• Suppose that we devise an encryption scheme as follows. First we take our plaintext and encrypt it
using a Vignère cipher with keyword “ai”. Then we take the output of that and encrypt it again,
this time using a Vignère cipher with keyword epa. The cipher we obtain in this way is equivalent
to a single Vignère cipher. What is the keyword for this single Vignère cipher? (Hint: You might
begin by trying to figure out what the length is. Another hint: The beginning of this keyword is a
word that is especially relevant this week.)
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Modular arithmetic
• Does 20 have a square root mod 57? If so, how many does it have (Some facts: (a) 57 factors as
3 · 19, (b) 20 is equivalent to 1 mod 19 and 2 mod 3, (c) 19 − 6 · 3 = 1).

• Does 39 have a square root mod 57? If so, how many does it have? (39 is equivalent to 1 mod 19
and 0 mod 3).

• Does x2 ≡ 8 mod 13 have a solution? Show your work. (Do it by checking all possibilities only if
you have to – there is a better method that would work on larger primes.)
• Find a positive integer x less than 11 such that 5322 ≡ x (mod 11)

• Let φ be the usual Euler φ function. Find φ(12).

• True or false and explain: aφ(12)+1 ≡ a (mod 12) for all positive integers a. (Hint: It is enough to
check things modulo 3 and 4 by the Chinese remainder theorem.)

• How many integers n with 0 ≤ n < 100 are there with the property that gcd(100, n) = 1? Explain
your answer.

• Calculate d = gcd(341, 1043) and find integers x, y so that d = 342x + 1043y (Bézout identity ).
Find all of the solutions of 341x = 1 (mod 1043).
Odds and ends
• Suppose the function f is defined by

f (00) = 0; f (01) = 1; f (10) = 1; f (11) = 0.

True or false and explain: we have f (a ⊕ b) = f (a) ⊕ f (b) for all a, b (where a and b are each two
bits).

• Suppose the function f is defined by

f (00) = 1; f (01) = 0; f (10) = 1; f (11) = 0.

True or false and explain: we have f (a⊕b) = f (a)⊕f (b) for all a, b (where a and b are each two bits).

• In an attempt to increase security, Bob decides to double encrypt his message by using one affine
cipher to encrypt, then another affine cipher to encrypt a second time. First, he encrpyts by sending
x to 3x + 1. For the second cipher he encyrpts by sending x to 5x + 11. This turns out to be exactly
the same as doing a single affine cipher encryption of x 7→ αx + β for what α and β (each between
0 and 25)?

• In an attempt to increase security, Alice decides to double encrypt her message by using a one Vi-
gnenère cipher to encrypt, then another Vignenère cipher to encrypt a second time. For the first
cipher she encrpyts with keyword “cat”. For the second cipher, she encpryts with keyword “dog”.
This is the same as doing a single Vignenère cipher encryption with what three-letter word (note,
the three letters you get might not be real English word).