# All Questions

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### Can Shannon's entropy be used to determine if a file is encrypted?

If we have to determine a file is encrypted or not, can we use Shannon's entropy algorithm on the file? As discussed here, the entropy (in bits per byte) being closer to 0 is considered as more ...
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### HSM RNG - Compliance to FIPS 186-2

If the RNG of an HSM is said to be compliant to FIPS 140-2 (approved DRBG - SP 800-90 CTR mode) does also imply that it is compliant to FIPS 186-2 ? Thank you
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### If I send a signed email, how does the end user get the public key?

I am sending a signed email using Python and smtplib. I have successfully signed the email using this example: http://proj.badc.rl.ac.uk/svn/ndg-security/branches/Dependencies/m2crypto/doc/howto.smime....
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### How to meter and limit number of files encrypted?

First my apologies if this isn't the right forum for this but here's my problem : I have a black box that takes an input file and produces an output file. I want to sell this black box to a customer ...
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### Terminology - hashing algorithm

From a definition stand point, can a hashing algorithm have more than one input, ex: hash(m1, m2, m3)? If not why algorithms like bcrypt, scrypt and pbkdf2 are referred to as password hashing ...
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### In which situation is HMAC mandatory rather than signature?

I’ve seen that the question has been asked already but this is still confusing to me. In a digital signature, Alice sends a message M and the ...
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### If I encrypt data with two different ECC Private keys, how secure is the result?

I'm wondering whether encrypting data with two different 256-bit ECC keys will result in a more secure encryption (minimum 384 bit equivalent) or will result in data that's effectively encrypted with ...
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### Encoding an element in $r=r'||h(r')$ way

We consider a finite field $\mathbb{F}_p$, where $p$ is a large prime e.g. 256-bit. We have $b$ a fixed element of the field. We encode it as $b'=b||h(b)$, where $h(.)$ is a cryptographic hash ...
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### What is entropy?

We discuss a lot of topics and use measures of entropy to determine how difficult it is for an attacker to be successful. What does entropy mean in the context of cryptography? How is entropy ...
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### Homomorphic encryption implementation over circuits or assembly code [on hold]

I've looked at a few implementation of homomorphic encryption, such as HElib, but they only consider additions/multiplications and such. Is anyone aware of any implementation of homomorphic ...
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### Entropy of Hash function [duplicate]

How is the entropy of the output of hash functions are defined? More specifically I saw in the paper https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/383.pdf Table 3 page 24. The entropy of challenge is mentioned which ...
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### Which public key cryptosystems are not based on number theory?

Are there any public key cryptographic systems whose hardness assumptions don't involve number theoretic problems?
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### Security of basic SHA256 MAC in an authenticate-then-encrypt scheme

I know the following construct is insecure if the MAC as defined below is appended to the encrypted message in an Encrypt then Authenticate (EtA) scheme. $k_1$: encryption key $k_2$: authentication ...
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### We can obtain “absolutely perfect CONFIDENTIALITY” using the one-time pad. Is there such a thing as “absolutely perfect INTEGRITY”? [duplicate]

The OTP (one-time pad) gives us perfect secrecy. This is the very best confidentiality available in this universe. (Although it does require large keys, which is beside the point of this question). ...
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### any post-shannon symmetric ciphers?

As far as I understand block ciphers use only simple operations to ensure good enough confusion and diffusion levels. meaning there is no math in it. "breaking a good cipher should require as much ...
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### Calculating Polynomial Inverse with extended euclid in java

I'm trying to understand the NTRU-PKCS and therefor I wanted to code a naive Version of it. Now my Problem: I tried to calculate the inverse of a Polynomial with an extended Version of euclids ...
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### Why is symmetric lightweight crypto only about block ciphers and not about stream ciphers?

Why is symmetric lightweight cryptography only about block ciphers and not about stream ciphers? AFAIK stream cipher implementations cost at least three times less than block cipher ones?
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### Does changing the order of the steps within a round affect the security of AES?

I was trying to understand the internal structure of AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) Standard order of steps within a round: Substitute Bytes Shift Rows Mix Columns Add Round Key Substitute ...