CP60059E Cyber Security - University of West London

Learning outcome 1: Understand the essential concepts and critically evaluate mechanisms and processes involved in securing information in an enterprise system environment.

Learning outcome 2: Demonstrate expertise in understanding and independent application of encryption/decryption algorithms and design encryption/decryption algorithms

Learning outcome 3: Analyse and apply knowledge and skills to investigate and protect against specific security threats.

Assessment 1

Playfair cipher was a revolutionary approach of its times. It solved issues with existing approaches and ensured that regular frequency distribution of the English language would not work as a valid cryptanalysis approach. Playfair cipher only uses 25 alphabets in its key and this is one of its main limitations.

Consider that you are one of the developers at an organization. Your organization is committed to the use of Playfair cipher. They want to use this algorithm to encrypt all passwords that are being shared among systems. You are expected to ensure that you can make this algorithm work. Keep this in mind that Playfair cipher only uses alphabets whereas, a password should have symbols.

In this assignment, you are expected to explain the following:
- What is Playfair cipher
- How the conventional algorithm works
- Changes you propose to this algorithm
- Benefits that you gain from these changes
- Encryption and decryption based on this new variation
- What are the weaknesses of this new approach
Explain each step and make sure that you explain things in a way that your document can be used to explain the concept to a person new to the logic.

Note: Your assignment must be submitted as a single PDF report.