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 do I encrypt with the private key? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: RSA encryption with private key and decryption with a public key This wording is creeping everywhere (e.g. there): "I encrypt with the private key" and even sometimes, ...
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Is there a public key semantically secure cryptosystem for which one can prove in zero knowledge the equivalence of two plaintexts?

If Alice encrypts two messages $a$ and $b$, such that $x=E(a)$, $y=E(b)$. Can Alice prove (without revealing $a$, $b$ or the private key) that $a = b$? Obviously the proof must not be too long and it ...
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Can I save space for short messages by using encryption with private key instead of a signature?

Let's say I have a message, a Private Key and a Public Key. Normally if you want to see if the message is unaltered and is from the sender you would have the message part + signature part, which you ...
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171 views

What's the main difference between Pohlig-Hellman and RSA?

Both Pohlig-Hellman and RSA perform encryption and decryption by exponentiation modulo some integer ($p$ prime for PH, $n$ composite for RSA). They both use a key $e$ as the exponent to encrypt a ...
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Applications of Group Ciphers

I've been reading a paper [1], and I've ran across something called a "Group Cipher", which is similar to homomorphic encryption, with an important difference. In homomorphic encryption we have an ...
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Correct method to encrypt data so that it can be decrypted only by Alice and Bob

I need to build a system that stores encrypted transactions. Transaction involves always two parties. Payer and payee. Both must be able to download encrypted transaction from server and decrypt it ...
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What's the fundamental difference between Diffie-Hellman and RSA?

What is the difference in the purpose of DH and RSA? Aren't they both public-key encryption?
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163 views

What is the strength of unpadded RSA?

I would like to use unpadded RSA for homomorphic encryption in a toy P2P game, for things like fair coin flips and shuffling. How many bits of security does unpadded RSA have, in relation to its key ...
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How to avoid a chicken and egg scenario with encrypting passwords?

I am working on application that allows users to upload files containing company data and then share those files with a list of other users that have specific roles within the system. I want to ...
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292 views

GPG/PGP Verification of Revocation

How does one verify a key revocation? After revoking a key and sending the revocation to MIT's keyserver, I noticed that the key is listed as such: ...
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1answer
278 views

What is the harm if I publish an encrypted RSA private key publicly?

What is the harm if I publish an encrypted RSA private key publicly? Or in this case, what is the harm if I publish many thousands or millions of them? Assuming that the private key is encrypted ...
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Is it possible to pick your Ed25519 public key?

Is it possible to generate an Ed25519 keypair that has a very similar public key as another keypair (fooling a casual visual comparison) or is this as hard as solving one of SHA-512 or the discrete ...
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How are timestamps verified?

You put an input and the hash value comes as an output then when someone puts the input the hash function it is applied to see if it is the same hash original value is stored in some database , that ...
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How to jusify {e,n} is a valid RSA public key?

I have a two set of key {36,77} and {50,117}, How can validate if it is a valid RSA public keys? Is there any simple method?
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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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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 ...
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2answers
520 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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197 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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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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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
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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 ...
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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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202 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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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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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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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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287 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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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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101 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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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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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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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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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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108 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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235 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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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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157 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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499 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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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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591 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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118 views

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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155 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 ...
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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 ...
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590 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 ...
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370 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, ...