All Questions

385 views

Counter Mode: static IV but different keys [duplicate]

Given we are using AES counter mode, suppose we randomly generate several keys, all of them are using same IV (say, zeros). Does this lead to any security issue? I know that in CTR mode, same key-iv ...
734 views

risk of attacker decrypting RSA ciphertext without public or private key

As I describe in my previous question I am trying to decide if it's worth it for me to use the Offline Private Key Protocol in creating some long term private archives, instead of just going with a ...
227 views

LT codes with Homomorphic hashing

I have been working on a project implementing LT codes with Homomorphic hashing (inspired from http://blog.notdot.net/2012/08/Damn-Cool-Algorithms-Homomorphic-Hashing and ...
178 views

Chosen ciphertext insecurity in an ElGamal variant

I'm trying to prove something and if I can show that there is a simple way to calculate $(g^a \bmod p)^k$ if I know both $g^k \bmod p$ and $g^a \bmod p$, then (I think) it will help me prove it, but ...
2k views

How to generate a list of unique random strings?

How would you generate a list of distinct random strings, where all strings are alphanumeric and have a fixed length?
990 views

McEliece Cryptosystem Implementations

Are there any current implementations (language irrelevant) of the McEliece Cryptosystem? I have been hunting around all day, and yet, have only found a few mathematical equations pertaining to the ...
110 views

Question about proof of knowledge defintion?

I am just reading the "soundness"-definition for proofs of knowledge by Bellare / Goldreich. A proof of knowledge is a proof between a prover $P$ and a verifier $V$. $P$ convinces $V$ to know a secret ...
194 views

RSA - Ecrypting the same data with the same public key = same ciphertext?

If an adversary knows my public key and guesses what was my plaintext, can he test for it somehow? The most obvious way is encrypting the guessed plaintext with my public key and the same parameters ...
154 views

implementing long term archive encryption

Let's say I want to create private archives for the long term (e.g. more than 30 ). The archives' sizes could be anywhere from 1 GB to 30 GB. As far as I understand I could go down two ways: The ...
175 views

How can a key pair be derived from an arbitrary hash?

If I correctly understand the concept of a "brain wallet" in BitCoin, you start with a passphrase, generate the hash of the passphrase, then somehow derive a public / private key from that to use as ...
631 views

Tamper-proofing log files

Problem Overview I want to securely store log files so the contents are secret, and they can't be modified without detection. The files will be encrypted using authenticated encryption (AES in GCM ...
427 views

What is the best way to store sensitive information on the client?

I am very inexperienced with cryptography and would like some advice on how to store some sensitive information on client machines. I have some information stored in a central database on my server. ...
453 views

Does key authentication in SSH protect from MitM?

How do cryptography in SSH(2) work (secure channel establishment, authentication)? Does key authentication in SSH(2) protect from MitM by providing authentication and integrity and why?
98 views

Algorithm digipass-like

I'm pretty sure there are famous algorithms for my problem, but I don't have enough knowledge in this field, so I need your lights. Here si the problem : Alice sends key X to Bob. Bob has an ...
349 views

97 views

What happen if a asymmetric crypto-system deals with only one key

Assume there is a crypto algorithm that deals with matrices to encrypt and decrypt. Regardless of the specification of such algorithm, what if the algorithm assumes that two parties can securely agree ...
3k views

Using the same secret key for encryption and authentication in a Encrypt-then-MAC scheme

Is it a weakness to use a single shared secret for protecting messages using a Encrypt-then-MAC scheme? Assuming a system is using AES-256-CBC and a SHA1-HMAC and the same secret key for both ...
332 views

Security of tokenization of plain text conversations - cryptanalysis

I came across a marketing video here. They claim to perform AES encryption and tokenization of sensitive data, at the corporate gateway, before it leaves the company firewall destined for the public ...
450 views

The utility of elliptic curve cryptography

Suppose that the only public key cryptography schemes that we knew were Diffie Hellman, RSA and ElGamal. How much would this set civilization back? Are there important applications of elliptic curve ...
139 views

Connections between Instance Hiding and Fully Homomorphic Encryption

Another approach taken by researchers for carrying out computations over encrypted data is Instance Hiding. In brief, If a user wants to outsource the computation of a function for a particular input ...
950 views

Triple-DES Brute Force

Shannon's paper states: A system is pure if all keys are equally likely and if for any three transformations, $T_i$, $T_j$, $T_k$ in the set, the product $T_iT_j^{-1}T_k$ is also a ...
2k views

Looking at the first step of AES encryption I see that we XOR the key with the plaintext block. Why is the actual key involved at all, why not just use the round keys derived from the key schedule?
272 views

When performing Shamir secret sharing I'm trying to find $z_i$, such that $z = x + y$. Where $n = 6$ and $t = 3$. I believe this would be the correct solution (correct me if I'm wrong): Each party ...
1k views

Is encrypting a single 128 bit block with AES ECB “safe”

I want to encrypt a small piece of data that is less that 16 bytes in size (think SSN), and I'll be using a 256bit encryption key. The typical suggestion is to never use ECB, but if there is just a ...
1k views

Should I trust CipherCloud? [closed]

Should I trust CipherCloud's system for "homomorphic encryption" of data in the cloud? Has the security of their system been subject to peer review or other cryptanalysis? Is there any known analysis ...
109 views

How to learn the first bit of m in padded RSA

Consider the following version of padded RSA encryption, where encryption of $m$ is done by setting $m′ = (0^k~||~r~||~00000000~||~m)$ for a random $r$ (of length 8 btyes = 64 bits) and then computing ...
278 views

What's the probable usage of Interlock Protocol

I've recently read some articles about the Interlock Protocol, Article by Ron Rivest and Adi Shamir. I'm wondering if it is possible to protect Key-exchange under Public-Key cryptography from the ...
200 views

Can prepending “junk” be equivalent to an IV when encrypting using CBC?

We are encrypting a small positive integer (1-1000) with a constant key using AES256 encryption. We are considering two approaches to make this secure; use an initial vector (which we then need to ...
236 views

How secure is passing a MAC to Python's random.seed before using random.choice to generate a MAC?

I'd like to use Python's random.choice seeded with a HMAC-SHA1 tag to generate a MAC encoded in a variable set of chars. ...
84 views

PKC McEliece + $S$ + $P$ [closed]

I am trying implement the McEliece crytosystem in SAGE. My question is How I will be able to choose the appropriate matrix $S$ and $P$?. I ask this because when I trying obtain the vector $\hat{m}=mS$ ...
218 views

GPG and PAR2 error correction data from the plain archive, will it compromise security?

I have the following scenario: Archives compressed with 7z, hundreds of MiB in size GPG to encrypt the archives (binary, without ASCII armor) PAR2 to create error correction data Question 1. ...
4k views

Why exactly is Blowfish faster than AES?

I've not been able to understand exactly the reason behind Blowfish being faster than AES. Is it dependent on the block size? Or is it processor dependent? (if Yes, then lets assume that AES ...
324 views

Why is $h(H, m) = E(m, H) \oplus m$ insecure?

I am taking a cryptography class on Coursera. I learned that the compression function $h(H, m) = E_m(H) \oplus m$ is insecure (even though other variants like Davies­-Meyer or Miyaguchi-Preneel are ...
836 views

Why are the Davies-Meyer and Miyaguchi-Preneel constructions secure?

The Davies-Meyer compression function $h(H, m) = E_m(H) \oplus H$ is said to be secure. So too is the Miyaguchi-Preneel compression function $h(H, m) = E_m(H) \oplus m \oplus H$. Why are these ...
533 views

Ciphertext-only attack on Simplified DES

Is it possible to deduce the plaintext block or the key, given only a Simplified-DES ciphertext block (e.g. c=01110110)? I'm reading Cryptography And Network Security, by William Stallings and I'm bit ...
400 views

Is there a way to use Shamir Secret Sharing with updatable data?

I want to divide a system that maintains these properties, based on Shamir's Secret Sharing: A secret key is split up to N pieces, where T of them are enough to reconstruct the key. The original key ...
448 views

May the problem with DES using OFB mode be generalized for all feistel ciphers

There is a problem with using DES as the block cipher in OFB mode, eg: the feedback that goes back into the next round will be encrypted with the same key $k$ resulting back into the plaintext IV used ...
139 views

Perfect secrecy and change of plaintext probability distributions

How to prove that if a cryptosystem has perfect secrecy for a given plaintext probability distribution then it will have perfect secrecy for all other possible plaintext probability distributions? Do ...