Blowfish Encryption Algorithm
Discuss about the Blowfish Encryption Algorithm and HTTPS.
Blowfish is an encryption technique which is a very strong weapon against hackers as well as the cyber criminals (Ab Rahman and Choo, 2015). It has been used widely in array of the products which includes some secure emails encryption tools, backup software and password for the management tools. It is a keyed symmetric cryptographic block cipher (Ab Rahman and Choo, 2015). It was created by Bruce Schneier in 1993. Given it have been reviewed substantially, it has gained contentment as a powerful algorithm for encryption. It is license free of charge actually it is easily available at no cost to almost all the customers (He, Machanavajjhala and Ding, 2014). It is a symmetric block cipher in which is utilized as the decline in alternative for the DES or maybe IDEA. The following are the strengths and the weaknesses of the encryption algorithm.
Strengths
It is an incredibly fast cipher- an encryption tool which has relatively simple structure and it is an effective (Bulgurcu, Cavusoglu and Benbasat, 2010). It can generate massive vital which alone is a major advantage to the security. With the increase in the speed of the computer processing, this tool is able to create much longer key which can be difficult to try to hack the key value.
Blowfish is amongst the fastest block ciphers in the general usage, aside whenever changing the keys. Each new key might necessitate pre-processing that is comparable to the encrypting in relation to the 4 kilobytes of the text, which is slow compared to the other block ciphers (Bulgurcu, Cavusoglu and Benbasat, 2010). This could prevent various programs, but not a problem to the others such as SplashID. When it comes to the application, it is a benefit particularly when password hashing technique has been used in the OpenBSD which utilized algorithm which has been derived from Blowfish which make usage of slow key schedule (He, Machanavajjhala and Ding, 2014).
The algorithm is not subject to any particular patents thus it is available for free to any user who might want to use it (He, Machanavajjhala and Ding, 2014). This is a contribution to its popularity in cryptographic programs.
Weaknesses
One of the disadvantage to this approach is that is should get key to the different away from the band in particular not through unsecured channel of transmission. All pairs of end users should be distinctive, thus as the number of the users improve, the key management evolves into a lot complicated (Manku and Vasanth , 2015). Blowfish algorithm could not provide an authentication as well as non repudiation given that two individuals that have key that is similar. Moreover, it bears weaknesses in regards to the process of decryption over the other algorithms in regards to the time consumption and serially in throughput.
Strengths and Weaknesses of Blowfish
Another weakness is the fact it should get fundamental key individuals out of band especially not via unsecured transmission channel (Safa, Von Solms and Furnell, 2016). Each of the pair of the customers’ needs to be unique, to ensure there is variety of the users’ increases , the fundamental management turns into a lot complex for example N( N-1 )/2 keys which are necessary.
Blowfish is a symmetric key block cipher algorithm; it is used for confidential exchange of the data such as emails, images and documents. As with all the symmetric algorithms it has a secure way to exchange on the secret key for the secure communication. Blowfish can be employed as an alternative for DES or IDEA algorithms. It is a symmetric that is an exclusive key which utilizes variables length key, from the 32 bits to the 448 bits, which considers it great for both domestic and exportable use (Catteddu, 2010). This cryptographic approach has become subject to huge amount of the cryptanalysis. The encryption has certainly not been broken (Naylor, Finamore, Leontiadis, Grunenberger, Mellia, Munafò, Papagiannaki and Steenkiste, 2014). It is certainly the fastest block ciphers in the public use, thus making it to become perfect to the products such as SplashID which functions to the wide variety of the processor which could be found on the mobile phone and notebook.
HTTPS is a way to encrypting data which one sends between the browser and the web server (Catteddu, 2010). This protects on the Websites udders from a kind of attack such as Man in the middle, where one could steal data that is being sent to the website such as credit card information or the logins.
What are the advantages of HTTPS?
Improved security: This is the reason as to why Google favors HTTPS since they want to attain safest web experience to the users (Felt, Barnes, King, Palmer, Bentzel and Tabriz, 2017). Google adds criteria to their rankings algorithms when they have proven to offer a better users experience. HTTPS could protect the users’ data from the hackers (Felt, Barnes, King, Palmer, Bentzel and Tabriz, 2017).
Increased Google Rankings: Over forty percent of all the sites on their first page of the Google are HTTPS, since the organization confirmed that they favor HTTPS sites. They want to ensure the best experience to their customers, thus, they do not want to send searchers to insecure sites.
How Blowfish is Currently Used
Increased conversions: The users might not have technical understanding of connections which are secure; they do understand that they want a site which is HTTPS if they are providing personal data (Felt, Barnes, King, Palmer, Bentzel and Tabriz, 2017).
Increased customer confidence: with the buzz going around in regards to HTTPS, there are many users who are looking for connections which are secure when they visit a website (Felt, Barnes, King, Palmer, Bentzel and Tabriz, 2017). A secure connection offers the client peace of mind to their website so that they could be trusted and information is safe.
What are its disadvantages?
HTTPS utilized a lot of the server Resources: HTTPS requires a lot of processing power as well as memory for the encryption (Felt, Barnes, King, Palmer, Bentzel and Tabriz, 2017). Some time ago this could be a problem, unless the site was running on the server from back end.
HTTPS introduces Latencies: There are concerns on how it impacts on the latencies which are based on the reality (Felt, Barnes, King, Palmer, Bentzel and Tabriz, 2017). The connections take longer to set up and more roundtrips. HTTPS could cause delays thus; it is worthy to run tests in order to ensure that SSL are not causing any real world latency.
Proxy caching issues: Over the SSL connections, everything is usually encrypted which includes the packet headers and the content (Felt, Barnes, King, Palmer, Bentzel and Tabriz, 2017). Any caching which takes place between the points at which the data has been encrypted and decrypted is blocked in case the content is encrypted (Ifinedo, 2014).
Mixed modes issues: when browsing the web, sometimes one could receive a warning which highlights that the site is ostensibly using SSL and it is serving insecure content (Ifinedo, 2014). This is because they are loading assets from the other sites or services which are not encrypted.
How is it different from HTTP?
HTTPS is regarded as Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. This involves the usage of SSL certificate which represents the secure sockets layer which generates a secure encrypted connection between the website server and web browser (Catteddu, 2010). The issue with HTTP data is not encrypted and thus it is possible for the 3rd party to intercept the data which is being passed between the two systems (Jeong, Seo, Cho, Kim and Park, 2015). Without HTTPS, any specific data passed is insecure. This will be significant especially for the sites where sensitive data has been passed across the connectivity for instance ecommerce sites which allow the online credit card payments or perhaps login areas which necessitates the users to enter their identification (Catteddu, 2010). HTTPS can make the sites substantially more secure from the hacker as well as other security breaches. Therefore this is one of the biggest reasons to migrate from HTTP to HTTPS.
HTTPS
How must the server be set up for HTTPS transactions?
To configure the HTTPS server the SSL guidelines should be allowed to the listening sockets in server block, and location of server certificate and private key data files must be specified.
The server certificate is generally a public entity. It can be delivered to each client who links to server. The private key is secure entity and should be stored to the file with the restricted access (Jeong, Seo, Cho, Kim and Park, 2015). Nevertheless, it must be comprehensible by nginx’s master process. Furthermore, the private key needs to be stored to the identical certificate (Catteddu, 2010). The file access right should be restricted. The directive ssl protocols and ssl ciphers are then utilized to limit on the connections to combine only the strong versions as well as ciphers of SSL.
How would it protect you using a public Wi-Fi connection at a local coffee shop?
It is important to connect to the websites through HTTPS, which encrypts anything which anything which is send and received from websites (McDonald and Sweet, 2015). While a VPN service usually encrypts everything which is sent, HTTPS usually ensures that communication to as well as from a given website is secure. To verify that one is connected through HTTPS, it is important to look at the addresses bar of browsers window.
Should all Web traffic be required to use HTTPS?
Yes they should utilize HTTPS. One of the reasons is because of security. Even on the blogs they are still have users who are logging into edit and write. No password should ever be passed in the plain text. SSL is required for the encryption. HTTPS helps to establish a trust to prevent sign on the site which could cause different risks for the business.
Firewall is software in which blocks suspicious transmission between a program of a computer and the network. Additionally, a firewall might block Drake software. The firewall usually loads when one start their computers (Khandelwal, Agarwal and Stoica, 2016). Examples of the firewalls are; Barracuda NextGen Firewell F10, SonicWall TZ 105, Cisco ASA 5500-X Series Firewalls.
It is a family of the hardware as well as virtual appliances which safeguards the network, enhances on the site to site connectivity and simplifies on the operations of the network. It may include the subsequent generation firewall technologies that include the layer key application controls, IPS, Web filtering, network access control and anti-virus. These types of firewalls monitor the TCP handshaking between packets to be able to guarantee the session is legit. The traffic is filtered that is depending on the numerous session rules and might be limited to recognized computer systems. It is able to hide on the networks themselves from the outside, and this useful to deny any access from the intruders.
Advantages of HTTPS
This is the many secure and unified Threat Management firewall which is accessible to small offices , home offices in addition to retail deployments. This technology delivers on the most effective anti-malware, content/ URL filtering as well as application controls which have capabilities to the broadest secure mobile platforms that support laptops, smartphones as well as tablets (Ormazabal, Schulzrinne, Yardeni and Singh, Verizon Patent and Licensing Inc, 2016). It offers a deep packet inspection to high level performance, thus, eliminating on the bottleneck which other products introduce, and hence allowing business to realize on increased gains in productivity.
This firewall delivers the network with the visibility one wants, superior threat as well as advanced malware protection and a greater automation in order to reduce on the costs and the complexity (Xu, Jiang, Wang, Yuan and Ren, 2014). This firewall assists organization to balance on the security effectiveness with the productivity. This solution usually provides a combination to the industry with most deployed state of the art firewall that has comprehensive range to the next generation network security services.
Upon review the one which could be recommended is the SonicWall product. The safety against not authorized and forged communications is essential compared to speed (AlHogail, 2015). Consequently, it is very important have a stateful filtering system. Barracuda product could be configured to be either, but the utilization aware products tend to be intelligent and offer much better protection.
References
Ab Rahman, N.H. and Choo, K.K.R., 2015. A survey of information security incident handling in the cloud. Computers & Security, 49, pp.45-69.
AlHogail, A., 2015. Design and validation of information security culture framework. Computers in Human Behavior, 49, pp.567-575.
Bulgurcu, B., Cavusoglu, H. and Benbasat, I., 2010. Information security policy compliance: an empirical study of rationality-based beliefs and information security awareness. MIS quarterly, 34(3), pp.523-548.
Catteddu, D., 2010. Cloud Computing: benefits, risks and recommendations for information security. In Web application security (pp. 17-17). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Felt, A.P., Barnes, R., King, A., Palmer, C., Bentzel, C. and Tabriz, P., 2017. Measuring HTTPS adoption on the web. In 26th USENIX Security Symposium (pp. 1323-1338).
He, X., Machanavajjhala, A. and Ding, B., 2014, June. Blowfish privacy: Tuning privacy-utility trade-offs using policies. In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data (pp. 1447-1458). ACM.
Jeong, J., Seo, J., Cho, G., Kim, H. and Park, J.S., 2015, March. A framework for security services based on software-defined networking. In Advanced Information Networking and Applications Workshops (WAINA), 2015 IEEE 29th International Conference on (pp. 150-153). IEEE.
Khandelwal, A., Agarwal, R. and Stoica, I., 2016, March. BlowFish: Dynamic Storage-Performance Tradeoff in Data Stores. In NSDI (pp. 485-500).
Ifinedo, P., 2014. Information systems security policy compliance: An empirical study of the effects of socialisation, influence, and cognition. Information & Management, 51(1), pp.69-79.
Manku, S. and Vasanth, K., 2015. Blowfish encryption algorithm for information security. ARPN Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 10(10), pp.4717-4719.
McDonald, I. and Sweet, M., 2015. Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) over HTTPS Transport Binding and the’ipps’ URI Scheme.
Naylor, D., Finamore, A., Leontiadis, I., Grunenberger, Y., Mellia, M., Munafò, M., Papagiannaki, K. and Steenkiste, P., 2014, December. The cost of the S in HTTPS. In Proceedings of the 10th ACM International on Conference on emerging Networking Experiments and Technologies (pp. 133-140). ACM.
Ormazabal, G.S., Schulzrinne, H.G., Yardeni, E. and Singh, K., Verizon Patent and Licensing Inc, 2016. System and method for testing network firewall using fine granularity measurements. U.S. Patent 9,374,342.
Safa, N.S., Von Solms, R. and Furnell, S., 2016. Information security policy compliance model in organizations. Computers & Security, 56, pp.70-82.
Xu, L., Jiang, C., Wang, J., Yuan, J. and Ren, Y., 2014. Information security in big data: privacy and data mining. IEEE Access, 2, pp.1149-1176.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
