In 1996, the United Kingdom government adopted a classified cipher, ‘Red Pike’, for potential use by the NHS. Since Red Pike is classified, information about the cryptographic algorithm is very limited. For example, the whole Wikipedia page (on 26th February 2013) only contains these few lines:“Red Pike is a classified United Kingdom government cipher, proposed for use by the National Health Service by GCHQ, but designed for a "broad range of applications in the British government". Little is publicly known about Red Pike, except that it is a block cipher with a 64-bit block size and 64-bit key length. According to the academic study of the cipher cited below and quoted in a paper by Ross Anderson and Markus Kuhn, it "uses the same basic operations as RC5" (add, XOR, and left shift) and "has no look-up tables, virtually no key schedule and requires only five lines of code"; "the influence of each key bit quickly cascades" and "each encryption involves of the order of 100 operations".Red Pike is available to approved British government contractors in software form, for use in confidential (not secret) government communication systems. GCHQ also designed the Rambutan cryptosystem for the same segment.”However, the lack of technical knowledge about this cipher has not prevented academics and experts to discuss its strength and weaknesses. For example a quick web search - using the keywords "red pike" AND “cipher“ – returns a few relevant entries including:- The GCHQ Protocol and Its Problems by R Anderson, M Roe.- Problems with the NHS Cryptography Strategy by R Anderson.- Red Pike -- An Assessment by C Mitchell, S Murphy, F Piper, P Wild.- The use of encryption and related services with the NHSnet by Zergo Limited. In this assignment, you are required to discuss, first, the strengths and weaknesses of using a classified cipher, such as Red Pike for an organisation such as the NHS. Secondly, based on the limited technical information known about Red Pike, you should assess if today Red Pike would still be a safe cipher. Finally, if the NHS asked you to introduce a new cryptography system tomorrow, which cipher(s) would you recommend? Your choice must be justified.\