Public key cryptography describes all cryptographic algorithms which have a pair of keys, one key that performs encryption and one key that performs decryption. One of these keys is made available publicly, allowing anyone to send messages that only the holder of the private key can read. You should ...

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How big an RSA key is considered secure today?

I think 1024 bit RSA keys were considered secure ~5 years ago, but I assume that's not true anymore. Can 2048 or 4096 keys still be relied upon, or have we gained too much computing power in the ...
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2answers
221 views

Additive ElGamal cryptosystem using a finite field

I'm trying to implement a modified version of the ElGamal cryptosystem as specified by Cramer et al. in "A secure and optimally efficient multi-authority election scheme", which possesses additive ...
2
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2answers
492 views

Why should the RSA private exponent have the same size as the modulus?

Consider the generation of an RSA key pair with a given modulus size $n$ and a known, small public exponent $e$ (typically $e = 3$ or $e = 65537$). A common method is to generate two random primes ...
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189 views

Is truncating a hashed private key with SHA-1 safe to use as the symmetric key for AES for data at rest?

I realize this is mixing the purposes between asymmetric and symmetric crypto, but I was wondering if it is safe to use a hashed, truncated private key (asymmetric) as the symmetric key for encrypting ...
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109 views

Is it possible to ensure security with zero pre-shared information?

Is it possible to secure a communications channel against both passive (sniffing) and active (injecting / MitM) attackers without either legitimate party knowing any pre-shared information? I know ...
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172 views

Encryption with private key?

we normally always encrypt by public key and decrypt with private key. If i encrypt with private key, then its still secure as normal PKI ? i mean known-plain-text will not take private key on the ...
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1answer
416 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 ...
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How can one securely generate an asymmetric key pair from a short passphrase?

Background info: I am planning on making a filehost with which one can encrypt and upload files. To protect the data against any form of hacking, I'd like not to know the encryption key ($K$) used for ...
2
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2answers
117 views

Does a high exponent compensate for a low degree of certainty?

If a RSA certificate is created with a low degree of certainty, does the value of the exponent compensate for this? I'm asking because certain implementations of key generation software hide the ...
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Impacts of not using RSA exponent of 65537

This RFC says the RSA Exponent should be 65537. Why is that number recommended and what are the theoretical and practical impacts & risks of making that number higher or lower? What are the ...
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200 views

How to decrypt this RSA-like cipher

Suppose we have a RSA-type Modulus $n = pq$ with $p,q$ prime. We also pick a random public exponent $e$ with $\gcd(e,\varphi(n)) = 1$ and compute the private exponent $d$ with $de \equiv 1 ...
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220 views

What is the correct value for “certainty” in RSA key pair generation?

I'm creating an RSA key pair in Bouncy Castle and need to specify an int value for certainty. This Stack Overflow answer says it is a relative test for how prime the values are. There is another ...
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Algorithm to securely exchange identities

Say four people each have a public/private key pair that they can use to encrypt or sign messages. They have an anonymous way to post messages such that the others can see them. Malicious entities can ...
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2answers
954 views

How much computing resource is required to brute-force RSA?

It's been over 30 years since Rivest, Shamir and Adleman first publicly described their algorithm for public-key cryptography; and the intelligence community is thought to have known about it for ...
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209 views

two public keys with same passphrase insecure? | can two hashes be compared?

Suppose someone had generated a 2.048-Bit RSA GPG/PGP key pair and published the public key on the usual key servers. Then he withdraws this key and generates a new one in 4.096-Bit RSA using the same ...
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280 views

How exactly are GPG keys mathematically related, and prime numbers inside of GPG general

Before anyone suggest it, I've yet to pick up "Applied Cryptography" I'm planning on picking it up the next time I visit amazon. I know that the keys are somehow mathematically related, and I know ...
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225 views

Is it possible to use the RSA algorithm, or a variant, for software licensing?

I'm almost a newbie about RSA encryption, so my question could it be banal. I'm beginning to create a licensing system for my software. I need to distribute a crypted license file to many customers. I ...
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100 views

How can the Schmidt–Samoa cryptosystem uniquely decrypt large messages?

Suppose I choose $p=7$ and $q=11$. This gives a public key of $p^2·q = 539$. However, decryption occurs using a modulus of $p·q=77$. If a person chooses to encrypt $500$ using my public key, how ...
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DGK Cryptosystem Key Generation and Decryption Issues

I detailed here the DGK (Ivan Damgård, Martin Geisler and Mikkel Krøigaard) cryptosystem, and I managed to get it to work, most of the time... The BIG problem that I am facing at the moment is that ...
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58 views

What is cross-certification [closed]

What does cross-certification mean? Can I program my app to accept all certificates that are cross-certified by a certain CA? How common practice is this?
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84 views

How can I protect against the failure of a block or symmetric cipher?

Can I protect against the failure of a block or symmetric cipher by chaining different techniques together? If so what implementation details should I be aware of? Are some combination of ciphers ...
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2answers
192 views

Is RSA in a ECB-like-mode safe for bulk encryption?

Let's say I would like to communicate with my friend using asymmetric/public-key encryption, e.g. RSA. (Note: I do realize that in practice this is done through an intermediate symmetric key, but ...
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99 views

When to prefer exchanging cryptographic certificates over exchanging only public keys?

Let's think of the following case: A group of peers want to exchange messages with each other. They use public-key cryptography to sign and encrypt messages. Anyone with any name can join the ...
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227 views

How can one sign with NTRU?

I am looking at implementing NTRU, but I noticed that while the encryption/decryption algorithm seems to be mature and well-documented, there is comparatively little information about how to sign ...
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How can SSL secure a two-way communication with only one key-pair?

As I understand it, SSL involved the use of a public-private key pair. How does this enable two-way communication? Suppose I have some server with which I wish to communicate securely. I connect to ...
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104 views

RSA/DSA: Wouldn't it make sense to sign using decoding the data hash?

Why is encoding using the private key used for signing? Wouldn't it make sense to keep the premise, that private is for decoding and public is for encoding? i.e. create a hash and threat it as a ...
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229 views

DGK Cryptosystem Encryption Speedup

Following @poncho's nice clarification of the RSA speedup here, let's see if I'm able to do the same in the case of the DGK cryptosystem: We have pk = (n, g, h, u), sk = (p, q, $v_p$, $v_q$) which ...
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1answer
182 views

ECIES protocol - what does the || operation mean?

I am studying elliptic curves problems, which also includes study of related protocols such as ECIES. A there is a problem I don't understand operation $||$. What this operation mean? Some stuff is ...
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154 views

Algorithm Design for only Mutual Information Sharing

Bob and Alice each have a bit string they want to keep private. They each want to know what the bitwise AND of their two strings would be without telling the other or anyone else listening to their ...
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2answers
466 views

Difficulty of breaking RSA for a given key size

Is it true that breaking a 1024-bit RSA key is as difficult as breaking a 128 bit symmetric key (e.g. AES)? I know that breaking a RSA key is equivalent to factoring the modulus $N$. To factor it, you ...
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414 views

Does NTRU decrypt correctly now?

The NTRU public-key cryptosystem has a lot of interesting properties (being resistant to quantum computer attacks, being standardized by several important bodies), but it also has a pretty unique ...
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547 views

Why DSA cannot be used for encryption?

Here it is mentioned that DSA cannot be used for encrypt. But Both RSA and DSA can be used to generate public and private keys, right? (Or am I wrong?). Then why can't I use the DSA public key to ...
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RSA reencryption scheme

Is there such an algorithm that would allow to upgrade the encryption of a RSA-encrypted message without revealing the plaintext to the untrusted user? Basically, such an algorithm would probably be ...
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148 views

Public Key Encryption with forward secrecy

Is there a known non-trivial system with plausibly secure public key encryption where: 1. $\;\;$ the $\:$ time $\:$ function is efficiently computable 2. $\;\;$ [pubkey,privkey] $\:$ pairs are ...
4
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1answer
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Do public/private pairs work both ways?

Public/private key algorithms such as RSA encrypt a message with a private key but only decrypted with another (mathematically related) key. Can the public key decrypt the messages encrypted with ...
6
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564 views

Generating Random Primes

Although this has been extensively discussed around here, I'm curious whether my approach makes sense, or I should just stick to "the standard version". I'm implementing some homomorphic encryption ...
6
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359 views

Security equivalence proofs for breaking RSA

It is my understanding that while a practical solution to the factoring problem will definitely break RSA, it has never been proven that the security of RSA is equivalent to factoring. In otherwords, ...
3
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3answers
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Are asymptotic lower bounds relevant to cryptography?

An asymptotic lower bound such as exponential-hardness is generally thought to imply that a problem is "inherently difficult". Encryption that is "inherently difficult" to break is thought to be ...
2
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1answer
185 views

Is this authenticated one-way communication protocol secure?

I am looking to see if this one-way communication protocol is secure. Assume Alice wants to send Bob a message (and doesn't need Bob to reply in the same session/channel - think email). Bob knows ...
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1answer
136 views

How are the primes used to generate RSA keys?

I am confused about how keys in RSA asymmetric encryption are generated and what the implications for open communications are. Textbooks say the one-way function is merely two primes (with some ...
3
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2answers
290 views

Can RSA encryption produce collisions?

In RSA, a message is encrypted by $m^e \pmod N$. $N$ is the modulus, $m$ is the message and $e$ is the public exponent. (I know that $m$ should not be greater than $N$.) My question is, can $m^e$ be ...
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334 views

Can we use elliptic curve cryptography in wireless sensors?

Can we use elliptic curve cryptography in wireless sensors? If so, how do you map points to message characters?
2
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2answers
2k views

How does a chosen plaintext attack on RSA work?

How can one run a chosen plaintext attack on RSA? If I can send some plaintexts and get the ciphertexts, how can I find a relation between them which helps me to crack another ciphertext?
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685 views

Symmetric vs. Asymmetric cryptographic approaches to data security

Ok. So, I now know the basic differences between them. But I'd love to know the deeper things, like: Exactly why is the asymmetric approach slower than the symmetric? Why does it make use of ...
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1answer
147 views

Which encodings have |encoding key| >> |decoding key|?

I'm looking for an encoding scheme that requires a very large encoding key E (>10MB) and suffices with a relatively small decoding key ...
2
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1answer
92 views

McEliece for streaming data

Under the assumption that there exists a real-world implementation of the McEliece scheme, could it be applied to streaming data as is? By that I mean in 'block cipher mode'? I've read that McEliece ...
5
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1answer
259 views

How should I check the received ephemeral Diffie-Hellman public keys?

In my application I'm doing a DH key exchange, where both sides generate their own ephemeral key. No static keys are used. I am trying to make my application resistant against an active attack and ...
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RSA encryption with private key and decryption with a public key

Does the encryption with a private key and decryption with a public key works in RSA? Is it done when we use RSA for sender authentication ? Thanks.
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Why does RSA give better security on longer messages?

I am trying to understand the notion of RSA security. Choosing a public exponent where $e = 3$ facilitates the calculations, considering that it is secure if the plaintext or message is long. If the ...
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Elliptic curve Cryptography [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Can we use elliptic curve cryptography in wireless sensors? How to map message character to point lies on Elliptic Curve? how to ecc used in wireless sensor networks? ...