Submitting Campus

Daytona Beach

Student Status

Graduate

Class Project

Daytona Beach: Graduate Student Works

Advisor Name

Laxima Niure Kandel, Ph.D.

Abstract/Description

The development and increasing accessibility of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools and large language models (LLMs) have allowed cryptographers to explore a variety of cryptanalysis problems in dynamic and interactive ways. Prompt engineering, the process by which input text is tested and refined to elicit a desired response from LLMs, is a nascent area of research that remains largely unexplored in many contexts, including cryptography. This study will explore the potential applications and limitations of prompt engineering in the context of Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption and key security with OpenAI’s ChatGPT (GPT-4o) through two main objectives: First, given a plaintext message and key, and through the refinement of input prompts, this study will examine if ChatGPT can successfully execute AES encryption. Outputs will be cross verified with the output of CrypTool 2, an open source, standalone software application that can encrypt plaintext messages without an internet connection. Second, ChatGPT will be given a key for AES encryption and prompted to remember the key (through the memory function enabled in GPT-4o) and keep it secret. Through an exploration of prompt refinement, this study will test whether ChatGPT can be coerced into revealing any information about the key, despite initial instruction to keep it a secret. This study aims to highlight both the functional capabilities and potential vulnerabilities of ChatGPT in cryptographic contexts.

Document Type

Poster

Publication/Presentation Date

2025

Location

Daytona Beach, FL

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