All Questions

652 views

Can I jettison MAC if I already have SHA1(M)?

I'm currently using SSL with AES-CBC and HMAC for a file transfer containing string M. Now suppose Alice already knows SHA1(M) (and the adversary does not), and she downloads M from Bob using only ...
167 views

Idea for secure password hash-likes, is this feasible/usable/workable?

(Hand moved from stackoverflow.com,due to suggestion) Since breaking password hashes has become a new passtime for scriptkiddies, I thought of the problem and came up with a novel(?) idea. store ...
884 views

Good enough deterministic PRNG based on hashes

Lets say I have a seed named iv which has a decent amount of entropy. Are there any glaring issues with the following? First 64 bytes are generated by SHA512(iv) Next 64 bytes are generated by ...
384 views

Do all stream ciphers (and AES-128-CTR in particular) produce equal output size as the input size?

I'm particulary interested on knowing if the output of the AES-128-CTR ciphertext is always going to have the same size as the input plaintext, or it could be padded somehow. It seems so from my tests ...
75 views

84 views

If Blum Blum Shub is modified to use a prime modulus, is it still secure?

The definition of the Blum Blum Shub cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator is $x=x^2 \mod N$ where $N=p \times q$, $p \in \mathbb P$, and $q \in \mathbb P$. Supposedly, the security ...
289 views

Is the complexity of Caesar (shift) ciphers “n * n!”?

Can we say that any shift cipher to be decrypted needs an algorithm of complexity “n * n!”? (where n is number of possible ...
394 views

What is the importance of adding round key in AES

I know this may not be the place to ask this but I have found it difficult to find an answer to this question. I know the steps of the AES encryption algorithm but I am finding it difficult to ...
451 views

Is this key management scheme secure?

I'm designing a scheme for management of a small number of cryptographic keys (< 100 at any given time) and I had an idea: rather than storing all the keys, could I just store one master key and ...
478 views

How does partial key escrow work?

It is being speculated that one of the ways that NSA leaker Edward Snowden may have created his "insurance policy" – distributing sensitive documents to various individuals with instructions to ...