Tagged Questions

3
votes
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 ...
1
vote
1answer
102 views

Is it safe to hold key file's hash in application

Title says all; Is it safe to hold key file's hash (MD5 or SHA1) in application (hard-coded)? Thanks
6
votes
2answers
375 views

Hash decrypts key, key decrypts cipher… why?

I noticed recently that a couple of pieces of encryption software (TrueCrypt being one of them) don't directly use a hash of the password as the key for the block cipher. Instead, they generate a ...
5
votes
4answers
362 views

Creating an encryption key from several other keys and using hash functions

I want to combine two or more keys to create a single encryption key that relies on all of them. What is the proper method for doing that? Simple XOR? Using hash functions? Something else? I ...
6
votes
2answers
249 views

Key Length & Hashing

I need to use a hash function to generate a 128-bit key for a symmetric cipher. The specific cipher is from the eStream portofolio, called Rabbit. I am using the SRP protocol for authentication (a ...
2
votes
1answer
115 views

A set of key pairs and one hash to secure them

I have a simple problem: I have a set of users' ECDSA key pairs, and say I want to encrypt them with a simple algorithm. I have access to one variable that uniquely identifies the user, so I hash it ...
10
votes
5answers
632 views

Why does PBKDF2 xor the iterations of the hash function together?

The definition of PBKDF2 states that I obtain a derived key* by calling a pseudorandom function a bunch of times recursively: ...