IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, VOL.13 No.

7, July 2013 9

Data Encryption and Decryption Using RSA Algorithm in a

Network Environment
Nentawe Y. Goshwe.
Department of Electrical/Electronics Engineering
University of Agriculture, Makurdi

Abstract classified based on the number of keys that are employed

One of the principal challenges of resource sharing on data for encryption and decryption. The three common types of
communication network is its security. This is premised on the algorithms are:
fact that once there is connectivity between computers sharing a. Secret Key Cryptography (SKC):
some resources, the issue of data security becomes critical. This The SKC method uses only a single key for both
paper presents a design of data encryption and decryption in a
network environment using RSA algorithm with a specific
encryption and decryption. The schemes are
message block size. The algorithm allows a message sender to generally categorized as being either stream ciphers
generate a public keys to encrypt the message and the receiver is or block ciphers. Stream ciphers operate on a single
sent a generated private key using a secured database. An bit (byte or computer word) at a time and implement
incorrect private key will still decrypt the encrypted message but some form of feedback mechanism so that the key is
to a form different from the original message. constantly changing while block cipher scheme
Key words: encrypts one block of data at a time using the same
encryption, decryption, key, Java key on each block.
The main drawback of this method is propagation
error because a distorted bit in transmission will
1. Introduction result in n distorted bits at the receiving side. Though
stream ciphers do not propagate transmission errors,
Cryptography is playing a major role in data protection in they are periodic therefore the key-stream will
applications running in a network environment. It allows eventually repeat. This normally results in the use of
people to do business electronically without worries of digital signature mechanisms with either large keys
deceit and deception in addition to ensuring the integrity for the public verification function or the use of a
of the message and authenticity of the sender. It has TTP.
become more critical to our day-to-day life because b. Public Key Cryptography (PKC):
thousands of people interact electronically every day; PKC scheme uses one key for encryption and a
through e-mail, e-commerce, ATM machines, cellular different key for decryption. Modern PKC was first
phones, etc. This geometric increase of information described using a two-key crypto system in which
transmitted electronically has made increased reliance on two parties could engage in a secure communication
cryptography and authentication by users [1-4]. over a non-secure communications channel without
Despite the fact that secured communication has existed having to share a secret key [5]. In PKC, one of the
for centuries, the key management problem has prevented keys is designated the public key and may be
it from commonplace application. The development of advertised as widely as the owner wants. The other
public-key cryptography has enabled large-scale network key is designated the private key and is never
of users that can communicate securely with one another revealed to another party. RSA is one of the first and
even if they had never communicated before [6-8]. still most common PKC implementation that is in
This paper considers a Public Key encryption method use today for key exchange or digital signatures.
using RSA algorithm that will convert the information to The cardinal advantage of this method is that
a form not understandable by the intruder therefore administration of keys on a network requires the
protecting unauthorized users from having access to the presence of only a functionally trusted TTP, as
information even if they are able to break into the system. opposed to an unconditionally trusted TTP.
Depending on the mode of usage, the TTP might
only be required in an “off-line” manner, as opposed
2. Methodology to in real time. Many public-key schemes yield
There are many ways of classifying data cryptographic relatively efficient signature mechanisms. The key
algorithms but for the purpose of this paper, they will be used to describe the public verification function is

Manuscript received July 5, 2013

Manuscript revised July 20, 2013
10 IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, VOL.13 No.7, July 2013

typically much smaller than for the symmetric-key

counterpart [6-9]
c. Hash Functions (HF): START
The HF uses a mathematical transformation to
irreversibly "encrypt" information. This algorithm
does not use keys for encryption and decryption of
data. It rather uses a fixed-length hash value which Read ‘plainText’, ‘p’, ‘q’
computed based on a plaintext that makes it ‘e’ and ‘d’.
impossible for either the contents or length of the
plaintext to be recovered. These algorithms are
typically used to provide a digital fingerprint of a
file's content, often used to ensure that the file has not NO Are ‘p’ and ‘q’
been altered by an intruder or virus. Hash functions prime numbers?
are also commonly employed by many operating
systems to encrypt passwords to provide some
YES
measure of the integrity of a file.
n = p*q
2.1 The RSA Algorithm for Creating RSA Public phi = (p-1)*(q-1)
and Private Key Pair
The RSA algorithm can be used for both key exchange
and digital signatures. Although employed with numbers
using hundreds of digits, the mathematics behind RSA is
relatively straight-forward. To create an RSA public and NO Are ‘e’ and ‘phi’ relatively

( − 1) an integer?
private key pair, the following steps can be used: prime?

( p − 1)(q − 1)
i. Choose two prime numbers, p and q. From Is ed

modulus, n = pq
these numbers you can calculate the

ii. Select a third number, e, that is relatively

the product ( p − 1)(q − 1) , the number e is the

prime to (i.e. it does not divide evenly into) YES

public exponent. Encode plainText = encodedText

quotient (ed − 1) . The number d is the

iii. Calculate an integer d from the

( p − 1)(q − 1)

The public key is the number pair (n, e ) .

C = M e Mod n
M = encodedText
private exponent.
iv.
Although these values are publicly known, it
is computationally infeasible to determine d C = cipherText
from n and e if p and q are large enough.
v. To encrypt a message, M, with the public

equation: C = M Mod n
key, creates the cipher-text, C, using the
e
Print ‘cipherText’, ‘n’,
vi. The receiver then decrypts the cipher-text ‘e’ and ‘d’.

M = C d Mod n
with the private key using the equation:

STOP

Figure 1.0: A flow chart illustrating the RSA decryption Algorithm

IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, VOL.13 No.7, July 2013 11

2.1 How to Use the Keys for Encryption This is actually the smallest possible value for the
modulus n for which the RSA algorithm works. Figure
Assuming a sender “A” that wants to send a message 2.0 illustrates the decryption procedures.
to a receiver “B”, the sender will take the following
steps:- 2.3 The Design of the Unified Modeling Language

Obtains the recipient B's public key (e, n )

(UML)
i.
An object programming paradigm (of which java is one of
ii. Represents the plaintext message as a positive
them) uses a unified form of describing each

= M e Mod n .
integer M . programming steps called Unified Modeling Language
iii. Computes the cipher-text C (UML). It is a standard notation that originated in the
iv. Send the cipher-text C to B. mid-1990s from the work of James Rumbaugh, Ivar
The flow chart of the encryption algorithm is as given in Jacobson and Grady Boch. UML is a graphical way of
Figure 1.0. representing and designing an object oriented language
for proper description of each step involved and the flow
layout of the program itself.
START This work chooses to use UML because it has the
advantage of clearly showing the relationship that exists
between the classes that form this work. There are three
packages that exist in this work, they are:
i. The applicationGUI Package
Read ‘cipherText’, ii. The dbinterface Package
‘n’ and ‘d’. iii. The encodinganddecoding package.

The applicationGUI package contains four classes;

MainApp.java, ReceiverInterface.java,
cipherText = C SenderInterface.java and TableDisplay.java. The
dbInterface package only contains the
RetrieveMessage.java and the SendMessage.java class.

M = C d Mod n
The encodinganddecoding package contains the
EncodingAndDecoding.java class. All these packages are
embedded in the project named
DataEncryptionAndDecryption.
In this paper the Top-down approach is used for the
Decode M = plainText design of the program therefore all the small objects are
put together to form the main object. The individual
classes of these smaller objects are specified with names
Print ‘plainText’. and are then linked together to form the major object.
The class names for the individual objects are;
i. TableDisplay.java
ii. SendMessage.java
STOP iii. RetrieveMessage.java
iv. EncodingAndDecoding
Figure 2.0: A Flow Chart to Illustrate the Decryption Algorithm The necessary java packages were imported while the
database was created in mySQL with three fields namely:
2.2 How to Use the Keys for Decryption “Cipher ID”, “Cipher Text” and “n” with security
administered on it. Frames were created with menus and
For the recipient “B” to receive the message sent by the call the ActionListener, SendMessage Interface is created
sender “A”, the recipient will take the following steps:- with labels, Buttons and TextAreas. This is followed by

compute M = C e Mod n .
i. Uses the private key (n, d) to creation of another RetrieveMessage interface with Label,
Buttons and TextAreas. And in addition, the Encoding and
Decoding class (which is a public class that encodes,
ii. Extracts the plaintext from the integer decodes, encrypt and decrypt by making use of the
representative M . BigInteger) were also created.
12 IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, VOL.13 No.7, July 2013

JFrame ActionListener The Encrypt Button is clicked, a Dialog box appear asking
for the value of “q”, which must be a prime number and
another dialog box prompting for the value of “p” which
must also be prime number (the product of “q” and “p”
- JLabel must not have more than 4 digits; which is the specified
block-size for this program).
- JTextARea To send the Cipher text to the database, the “Send Button”
- JButton (-) implies private. is clicked and the dialog box returns the value of n, e and
(+) implies public. d as 9557, 17 and 7973 respectively.
+ Init components
+ ActionPerformed

+ BigInteger

Figure 3.0: A UML to Illustrate the Program Design for the Private and
Public Keys

3. Results and Discussion

The program was run and compiled on Windows XP and
tested on University of Agriculture, Makurdi local area
network which is structured on V-LAN topology. The Figure 5.0: A Dialog Box Returning the Values of n, e and d.
Graphic User Interface (GUI) is designed to be user
friendly and can be used without knowledge of At the receiver end, the receiver uses the “Retrieve
programming in Java. Message” GUI to request for the value of “cipher ID”
from the database. A correct entry of the Cipher ID will
3.1 The “Sent Message” GUI Output. return the Cipher text dialog box and requesting for value
of “d” for decryption to take place as shown in Figure 5.0.
Running the program gives a frame with menus that can The database identifies the message and the
send or retrieve a message from the database. The sender corresponding Cipher ID. This converts the Cipher text to
sent a test message “my credit card number is ASCII codes and returns it in the “Encoded Text” box.
234M99934”. The Plaintext (“my credit card number is
234M99934”) is entered in the plain text area before
clicking on encode to convert the text to ASCII code and
the result is placed in the Encoded Text as shown in
Figure 4.0.

Figure 6.0: A Correct Entry of the Cipher ID with the Requested Value
of “d”.

For a correct Cipher ID, the dialog box will return the
correct Cipher text as shown in Figure 6.0. Correct entry
Figure 4.0: The GUI of the Plain Text, Encoded Text and Cipher Text of the value of “d” at the Receiver Interface will return the
Result.
Correct Retrieved “Plain Text” Message as shown in
Figure 7.0.
IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, VOL.13 No.7, July 2013 13

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Figure 7.0: Receiver Interface with the Correct Retrieved “Plain Text” algorithm for decryption using Chinese remainder theorem.
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Nentawe Y. Goshwe received B.

Engineering in Electrical/ Electronic
from University of Agriculture, Makurdi
and M. Engineering degrees in
Electronics from ATBU Bauchi in 1992
and 2000, respectively and a PhD from
University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He
Joined the University in 1996 and
doubles as both a Lecturer in the
Figure 8.0 Interface Shows a Meaningless Message with Wrong Value Department of Electrical/Electronic Engineering, and Director of
of “d”. Information and Communication Technology, University of
Agriculture, Makurdi, Nigeria.

4. Conclusion
The paper has presented data encryption and decryption in
a network environment that was successfully implemented.
With this software, data can be transferred from one
computer terminal to another via an unsecured network
environment. An eavesdropper that breaks into the
message will return a meaningless message. Obviously
encryption and decryption is one of the best ways of
hiding the meanings of a message from intruders in a
network environment.