2
votes
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 ...
2
votes
2answers
252 views

Simple xor cipher extension

Probably the simplest cipher is the xor cipher with a single integer. One can extend this to use more than one integer by several means. I'm wondering if there is any benefit to doing more than this: ...
3
votes
1answer
133 views

When is an asymmetric scheme considered broken?

Does the following quote imply that valid encrypted data can be created and decrypted by someone other than the owner of a private key: An asymmetric encryption scheme is considered to be broken ...
6
votes
4answers
912 views

What is the difference between a stream cipher and a one-time-pad?

A (synchronous) stream cipher is an algorithm which maps some fixed-length key to an arbitrary-length key-stream (i.e. a sequence of bits): $C : \{0,1\}^k \to \{0,1\}^{\infty}$. This key-stream is ...
48
votes
10answers
3k views

Is modern encryption needlessly complicated?

RSA, DES, AES, etc. all use (relatively) complicated mathematics to encrypt some message with some key. For each of these methods, there have been several documented vulnerabilities found over the ...
4
votes
3answers
542 views

Is it feasible to build a stream cipher from a cryptographic hash function?

A few years ago I devised a symmetric-key system that worked like so: ...