# All Questions

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### Does Identity-Based Encryption actually solve any problem?

Identity based encryption schemes [*] seem to have great potential in high-latency Delay-Tolerant and mobile, ad-hoc networks since they apparently seem to avoid the need for key negotiation and ...
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### Digital Signatures, Standard Hash Functions and MACs

I'm studying Hash functions and Digital Signatures in sequence, and came up with some doubts about their usage. First of all: What is the difference between hashing a document and signing it? And ...
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### File Encryption/Decryption in ECB mode [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Removing Padded Value in Decrypted Message I tried to encrypt and decrypt a file in ECB mode using AES Algorithm but I encountered one problem during decryption, I don't ...
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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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### K out of N encryption

A friend just showed me how to combine padlocks to achieve a lock that opens when k out of n people turn their keys. I was ...
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### OpenPGP Signature Packet hashed data

RFC 4880 describes the version 4 signature packet, tag 2, as ...
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### Using compression to test encryption

Is the uncompressibility of encrypted data a necessary property for a good cryptographic algorithm? To make a crude experiment, I encrypted an 8K file with all 'A' and then compressed both the ...
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### “Signing” with public key

For this question, the following caveats and assumptions hold: There exists a 2048-bit RSA key pair used exclusively for signing/verification The private key is kept completely private There exists ...
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### Is this streamable combination of encryption and MAC secure?

I want to combine encryption and MAC. For encryption I use AES-256 with CBC and PKCS5Padding. For MAC I use HmacSHA512. I use the Encrypt-then-Mac approach (calculate MAC over the ciphertext and ...
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### How to get the keyword from a keyword cipher?

I was given a ciphertext and now I am trying to break it via looking for the keyword. This is a keyword cipher. So: PlainEnglish: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ If ...
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### In the SHA hash algorithm, why is the message always padded?

In the SHA hash algorithm the message is always padded, even if initially the correct length without padding; the padding is of the form "1" followed by the necessary number of 0s. Why is it ...
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### Replay attack prevention under strict conditions

Say I have a request-response protocol and the task to make it immune to replay attacks. The requirements are as follows: The defense mechanism cannot rely on the clocks of the parties. The defense ...
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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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### Is every output of a hash function possible?

Is every output of a hash function (e.g. SHA1, MD5, etc) guaranteed to be possible, or, conversely, are there any output values that cannot possibly be created from any input? If so, what guarantees ...
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### Safely use CryptSignAndEncryptMessage?

I am developing an application that sends messages which I want to encrypt and sign. The CryptoApi offers a function called CryptSignAndEncryptMessage. The description says, what this function ...
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### are CFB and OFB really meant for streaming?

CFB, OFB and other modes are meant for streaming and don't require padding. Are there still limitations such as the text needs to be greater than key length?
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### Is quantum key distribution safe against MITM attacks too?

i read this recently: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12786-quantum-cryptography-to-protect-swiss-election.html and some parts of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_key_distribution ...