Encryption is the process of transforming plaintext using a cipher to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing the key.
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Zero-Knowledge Challenge-Responce Protocol
Good day to everyone.
I am trying to implement an e voting system (just for reference -it is not important though-it is described at the Internet Voting Protocol Based on Improved Implicit Security ...
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2answers
60 views
Is it safe for the ChaCha8 nonce to be deterministic?
ChaCha8 takes a 8 byte nonce (or IV) that should not be the same twice for the same key. Generating this nonce randomly makes me very very nervous for collisions.
Is it safe to generate this nonce ...
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1answer
489 views
Why is CAMELLIA suddenly so widely used?
When nowadays I point my browser to https sites, the cipher that is on most occasions used is Camellia. My browsers (Chrome and Firefox) seem to prefer it, even when AES is available.
Is that not ...
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1answer
135 views
Question about why RSA is hard to attack
I think I understand why RSA is hard to attack but I'd like to get clarification if I actually do.
Assume there are two people, Alice and Bob, who are attempting to communicate privately but that we ...
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4answers
174 views
Bad/Crackable Encryption Example?
I've been tasked with building up some security exercises (basic CTF training kind of stuff) for work. This should contain a bit of crypto, but my knowledge in this space has been limited to using the ...
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3answers
167 views
Why do we assume un-security of communication channel on every cryptography system
While reading about a few cryptographic systems, I noticed that we always assume the communication channel is not secured. Why is this assumption made? And, why the effort is being put into designing ...
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1answer
92 views
Low complexity implementation of a small blocksize cipher (< 64 bit)
Searching for "small blocksize cipher" finds a number of discussions on the topic, mostly refering to FPE.
This one in particular suggests using AES as the round function of a Feistel network.
The ...
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1answer
144 views
How to break AES CBC with PKCS#5 padding?
If I have a string encoded with AES CBC with PKCS#5 padding, how can one possibly decrypt/crack it? What are the approaches that one can take to break its security?
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1answer
334 views
Selective format-compliant JPEG encryption?
I am working towards building a format-compliant encryption system for pictures. The aim of it is to be able to obscure specific areas of a picture (i.e. faces, car license numbers...) while keeping ...
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1answer
118 views
Request for 1024-bit primes $p$ , subgroup $q$ and subgroup generator $g$
I need to find a prime $p$ of $1024$ bits with a $160$ bit sub group size $q$, such that $q|p-1$ , and $g$ is the generator of the sub group size $q$.
I'm looking for the numeric values of $p$ , $q$ ...
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1answer
101 views
What is 'security margin'?
I have been academic papers about Rijndael, Serpent, and Twofish, and there is this term that is vague to me. I cannot find a tangible definition in google. Can someone briefly define, describe, ...
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2answers
150 views
Is such a crypto-system available?
$E(k_1, pt) = c_1, E(k_2, c_1) = c_2, D(k_{new}, c_2) = pt$, where $k_{new} = f(k_1, k_2).$ Sharing $k_{new}$ and $k_2$ should reveal no information about $k_1$.
Clarifications:
Being able to ...
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3answers
191 views
How to check the strength of an encryption algorithm?
I asking for advice on how to check strength of an encryption algorithm.
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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 ...
2
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1answer
140 views
Visualization of cryptography
I think CrypTool is great software. And what I find most useful in it is visualization of algorithms such as Caesar, Vigenere, AES, DES. And my question is: does anyone know other tools which are ...
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1answer
395 views
How do I derive the time complexity of encryption and decryption based on modular arithmetic?
I want to calculate the time complexity of two encryption and decryption algorithms.
The first one (RSA-like) has the encryption
$$ C := M^e \bmod N $$
and decryption
$$ M_P := C^d \bmod N. $$
...
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0answers
47 views
How compute encrypt and decrypt runtime for agorithm [closed]
I programming RSA algorithm is the following two function in java language in my thesis
...
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1answer
97 views
How can encryption software accept password lengths which are not one of the AES key lengths?
AES comes with key sizes of 128, 192, and 256 bit.
But in Truecrypt or other crypto software we can use passwords of different length, even less than 128 bit or more than 256 bit.
How is this ...
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3answers
62 views
Secure communication between multiple peers on a public channel
I am wondering how can I secure communications between multiple peers over a public channel, like an IRC channel. With two peers it is easy - they exchange their encryption keys and decrypt the secret ...
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3answers
143 views
What is a block cipher?
I have read about block ciphers, but I do not understand the topic completely.
Is a block cipher a way to send data or a way to encrypt data?
How is the data divided into multiply blocks before it ...
2
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1answer
90 views
Hashing a password with the password?
I was wondering if hashing a password with the password would be a good way of encrypting the password. So, the user must know his/her password to get the same result as the one in the database. Also, ...
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0answers
46 views
Encrypting or HMACing password digests
Assuming I'm using bcrypt to digest passwords, is any additional security gained by either encrypting or HMACing the resulting digests? By requiring a key to compare password hashes, I would expect ...
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0answers
47 views
How compared encryption algorithm in terms of efficiency
I doing to compare two algorithm cryptography. first algorithm is RSA cryptography and second algorithm is El Gamal elliptic curve cryptography. now I want a way to compare between two algorithm by ...
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1answer
333 views
How to break an arbitrary XOR and Rotation based encryption?
I heard encryption based purely on XOR and Rotation is inherently weak. The paper Rotational Cryptanalysis of ARX says:
It is also easy to prove that omitting addition or rotation is devastating, ...
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1answer
78 views
Two way encryption with random IV
I'm attempting to encrypt some information into our database to be later pulled back out and displayed to the user. Searching and reading up on different methods I found a post over at stack exchanged ...
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1answer
96 views
What does a “cycle” mean in cryptography benchmarks?
In this table, for example, cryptographic algorithm performance is measured in cycles per byte for symmetric ciphers, and in cycles per operation for asymmetric ciphers.
What does "cycle" here mean, ...
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2answers
159 views
Is it possible to break a hash-based block cipher?
Let's define the following block cipher:
$C_n = M_n \oplus H(k + n)$ where $C_n$ is the nth block of ciphertext, $M_n$ is the nth block of plaintext, $H$ is a cryptographic hash function, and $k$ is ...
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3answers
315 views
How and why can a decryption program tell me that a key is incorrect?
I have noticed that some programs used for file encryption will tell you if an entered key is wrong when you try to decrypt. It seems (to me at least) that this would mean that the key somehow is ...
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1answer
251 views
What happens if an RSA key pair has identical public and private exponents?
Rather, is it possible for big prime numbers?
Classroom examples usually involve smaller primes, so for example if you are given a prime number pair $p = 3$, $q = 13$ you would get $n = 39$ and $e = ...
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1answer
117 views
Future-Proof Versioning and Validation
I am working on a library (using standard primitives: AES256 CTR; HMAC with SHA256; PBKDF2 with SHA256, 128 bit salt, and 10000 rounds) to encrypt and decrypt data, given a password.
The encrypted ...
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2answers
360 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 ...
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0answers
47 views
Intorduction to AES basics and where do i get online material [closed]
I'm final year undergraduate, i came across this encryption standarad and when i met my professor about this encyption standarad, he said ok go on with it, but he is not willing to guide me from ...
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2answers
114 views
FIPS 140 compliance for encrypted files
Does FIPS 140-2 require specific key sizes, or does it have specific requirements for the data?
In other words, if I encrypt a file, how I can check whether it is FIPS-compliant or not? Does only the ...
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1answer
75 views
Individual bits of Textbook RSA
This question relates to the underlying RSA assumption. Forgetting about the fact that Textbook RSA is deterministic, I am curious about the assumed strength of the RSA problem.
Does RSA hide all ...
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1answer
148 views
Is there a field guide to ECC for the IT Security layman?
I'm trying to understand ECC from an IT layman's perspective and am trying to separate the theory from the standards, and understand why certain features are implemented or not implemented in the ...
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3answers
115 views
Public keys and their protocols
I'm having difficulties understanding exactly what this protocol means:
$S \to D : \{N_S , S\}K_D$
$D \to S : \{N_S , N_D \}K_S$
$S \to D : \{N_D \}K_D$
"where $S$ represents the supervisor’s ...
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1answer
184 views
A single password manager vs password generator/hash
I have been wondering about the options available for managing passwords. However, they all seem to fail if the master password is compromised (which isn't a big surprise).
On one hand you have ...
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1answer
140 views
Can a shift cipher attain perfect secrecy?
On a practice question for my intro cryptography exam, it asks the following:
Assuming that keys are chosen with equal likelihood, the shift cipher provides:
A) computational security
...
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1answer
222 views
How much extra information is in an RSA public key?
I'm trying to calculate the size of an RSA public key in Ruby. I've retrieved the key in PEM format, and once I've decoded the base64 part from the PEM format, I get the size in bytes. What I find is ...
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2answers
116 views
Information leakage in real-time voice encryption
I saw some time ago a post discussing the issues surrounding encryption of speech/voice in VoIP and how it can leak information (can't find it now). Can someone provide an insight into some of the ...
3
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1answer
335 views
Compare Blockmode CBC (with diffuser) against XTS
I have some problems in understanding the "advantage" of AES-XTS compared to CBC with diffuser.
I read something about FileVault, in this paper they mention the two modes of operations XTS and CBC ...
3
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2answers
173 views
Two step encryption
Is there any asymmetric cryptography algorithm which will allow recursive encryption.
...
4
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1answer
139 views
In RSA encryption, does the value of e need to be random?
I am a novice programmer and am just finishing up an RSA encryption program that I am writing for practice. Currently I have the program generate a relatively small random value for the public key e. ...
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1answer
113 views
What's a good P to use in ElGamal key generation?
I need to generate a 1024 bit ElGamal key on Android, and key generation takes forever (~10 minutes on a Galaxy Nexus), I suspect because it take so long to generate a safe prime.
Is it dangerous for ...
3
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2answers
108 views
Is there an advantage to storing keys split between several hashes?
I have a question about the way to store a key or password that was used for encryption, so that the application can check if the user put in the right key for decryption. If I make a mistake, please ...
4
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2answers
126 views
Will varying plaintext compensate for a fixed initialisation vector?
This is a follow-up question to Relative merits of AES ECB and CBC modes for securing data at rest.
I need to store encrypted Personal Account Numbers (PANs) in a database. The only encryption option ...
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5answers
315 views
Using CBC with a fixed IV and a random first plaintext block
What if, instead of using CBC mode in the normal way with a random IV, I used this approach:
Use a fixed IV (like a block of 0's).
Before encrypting, generate a random block and prepend it to the ...
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1answer
1k views
Difference between stream cipher and block cipher
A typical stream cipher encrypts plaintext one byte at a time, although a stream cipher may be designed to operate on one bit at a time or on units larger than a byte at a time.
A block cipher ...
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1answer
156 views
How does a client verify a server certificate?
As far as I know,
when I request a certificate from Verisign (for example), and after they approved that me is me, they create a certificate (for me) which contains the digital signature and public ...
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1answer
233 views
Is it possible to crack a blowfish 256 bits encrypted file?
I have a file of my own that i have encrypted using Coder-Abi. Now i can just remember part of this password. So, would it be possible (much easier) for me to crack it knowing only part of it? I can ...
