Tagged Questions

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1answer
71 views

Ciphers in CBC mode reveal place of change in plaintext

Theoretically, when using a symmetric block cipher in CBC mode, the current block is dependent on the previous block. Suppose one plaintext is encrypted using CBC, and then one bit of it is changed, ...
2
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2answers
133 views

How can mega store my login details and still be secure?

I understand how Mega's encryption works. For a quick summary of all those in the future looking for an answer on this... here is how it works: Upon first signing up for an account you make a ...
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2answers
210 views

Would a “Triple AES” (in the sense of how Triple Des works) serve for a dramatic increase in safety?

The system requires to be as paranoid as possible regarding security. One of the few contemplated changes to the current design is to use multiple encryption. First proposal was to use Serpent on top ...
2
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2answers
169 views

Why does the recommended key size between symmetric and assymetric encryption differ greatly?

In various articles it is mentioned that for secure communications, the recommended key sizes are 128-bit key size for symmetric encryption (which makes it $2^{128}$ possible keys?) and 2048-bit key ...
1
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2answers
362 views

Why is asymmetric cryptography bad for huge data?

I've been told that asymmetric cryptography requires that the message to be encrypted be smaller than its key length. Why is this? I know about hybrid encryption, which uses symmetric encryption to ...
2
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2answers
203 views

Encryption scheme with equivalent keys?

I've long been looking for a symmetric encryption scheme (or algorithm) with equivalent keys. Let me define what I want: Symmetric encryption algorithm with encryption function $E_k$ and inverse ...
3
votes
1answer
256 views

Is this a good way to encrypt a file?

I need to encrypt a file, distribute it over an insecure channel, and decrypt it later. Using a symmetric-key algorithm. Here's what I intend to do: Get a password P from the user. Generate a 16-byte ...
2
votes
1answer
253 views

Self-expiring symmetric keys, or: cryptography in absence of secure deletion

I can encrypt some data D using a random symmetric key K, obtaining a ciphertext C, and then encrypt K with my public key Pub and obtain H. So far so good: I can only decrypt C if I have H and my ...
3
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3answers
467 views

Which of these 3 AES 128 symmetric encrypt/decrypt routines is most secure?

I am developing a symmetric en-/decryption routine written in c# for a database containing user-specific, sensitive information. I have narrowed down the implementation to 3 different approaches, ...
2
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1answer
410 views

Is this design of client side encryption secure?

I want to build a secure file storage web application. Users should be sure that server doesn't know how to decrypt files so encryption should take place at client side (i.e. in Javascript) and TLS ...
9
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1answer
1k views

Why do we use encrypt-decrypt-encrypt (EDE) in 3DES, rather than encrypting three times?

I'm wondering why we use encrypt-decrypt-encrypt sequence in 3DES with three keys instead of three times encryption with three different keys?
2
votes
1answer
601 views

Sending KCV (key check value) with cipher text

I was wondering why it is not more common to send the KCV of a secret key together with the cipher text. I see many systems that send cipher text and properly prepend the IV to e.g. a CBC mode ...
7
votes
4answers
292 views

Can I determine if a user has the wrong symmetric encryption key?

We're using the Objectivity/DB object database with a custom encryption plugin that encrypts serialized objects on disk. Encryption uses AES with a shared secret key held by all users. I would like to ...
10
votes
1answer
2k views

How to choose a padding mode with AES

Depending on the framework you are using, there are various padding modes that can be used with AES encryption. For example, with .NET we can choose PKCS7, ISO10126, ANSIX923, Zeros or None. I ...
3
votes
3answers
612 views

What is the importance of Modular arithmetic in cryptography?

Why do we use modular arithmetic so often in Cryptography?
4
votes
1answer
309 views

Are there two-way encryption algorithms that include a work factor?

I recently learned about the hashing algorithm bcrypt, which allows you to specify a "work factor" for the hash which can be incremented to stay ahead of Moore's Law. I understand there are some other ...
2
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2answers
790 views

How to distribute session keys in public key cryptography?

In public key cryptography we can also use session keys which are symmetric. How do the sender (say a server) provides this session key information to its clients? If the sender (here server) ...
1
vote
3answers
469 views

How does one scale encryption strength upwards from 256-bit?

I have seen many examples of encryption up to about 256-bit. But how does one programmatically scale the logic upwards in a language such as PHP or Java to say 1024-bit or even 4096-bit and higher? ...