# All Questions

867 views

### Compare two hashes with different salt

I'm storing the salted hash of a credit card number in a database. What I'd like to be able to do is determine if two different entries in the same database correspond to the same credit card. ...
2k views

### Constructing a block-cipher from a hash function

It is possible to use a hash function to construct a block cipher with a structure similar to DES? Because a hash function is one way and a block cipher must be reversible (to decrypt), how is it ...
2k views

### Estimating bits of entropy

Best ways to estimate average bits of entropy in a byte stream. I know there are different statistical tests out there (NIST, Dieharder, etc), which all do different ways of analyzing entropy. What ...
2k views

### RSA blind signatures in practice

Hi I have a problem with moving my blind signature implementation from educational (textbook RSA) to more practical (padded RSA) side. David Chaums paper gives a following figure: $r$ - blinding ...
2k views

### Understanding CRC [closed]

There are zillions of articles describing CRC. What can I read to (more deeply) understand what's really going on? Both from an algebraic perspective and a bit-manipulation perspective, I'd like to ...
793 views

### Are cryptographic hash functions perfect hash functions?

For a cryptographic hash function and input values of shorter length than the hash function output, it's pretty obvious that there should be as few collisions as possible. But are there guaranteed to ...
1k views

### Is RSA key size the size of private key exponent?

I have implemented a key pair generation scheme for RSA algorithm. I have taken the length of private key exponent as RSA key size, but then I've got to know that RSA key size is the size of the ...
915 views

### Could quantum computers “break” symmetric crypto-systems (e.g. AES)?

These days I'm reading about quantum computing and quantum cryptography which I've found extremely interesting. Well, I also read some blog posts of Bruce Schneier talking about how quantum computers ...
3k views

### SHA1 no longer considered secure for SSL Certificates — what about Cipher Suites?

Many browsers and Internet companies have recently claimed that SSL Certificates with a signature algorithm of SHA1 will imminently no longer be considered secure. Most notably, Google and Google ...
4k views

### Common modulus attack on RSA when the 2 public exponents differ by a single bit

This is an exam question an i have no idea how to recover the message m. John wants to send an encrypted message to mary who has a pair of RSA keys, However, John does not know Mary's public key and ...
1k views

### Is the AES Key Schedule weak?

After reading this paper entitled Key Recovery Attacks of Practical Complexity on AES Variants With Up To 10 Rounds I was left wondering why the key schedule of AES is invertable. In the paper the ...
386 views

### Composing two one-way functions such that the result is not a one-way function

Is it possible to have two distinct one-way functions (called, say, $h$ and $g$) such that their composition $h \circ g = [\, x \mapsto h(g(x)) \,]$ is not one-way?
230 views

### Why is “semantically secure” important for cryptosystems?

The first question: what is the exact definition of semantically secure? Basically, a cryptosystem is semantically secure if given the public key and the ciphertext, an adversary cannot learn any ...
413 views

### What is a block cipher?

I have read about block ciphers, but I do not understand the topic completely. Is a block cipher a way to send data or a way to encrypt data? How is the data divided into multiply blocks before it ...
358 views

### Does salt size affect password hash security?

I use PBKDF2-SHA512 with an iteration count of 128,000 to hash my passwords. I use a CSPRNG to generate a salt per password. However, I am unsure about the ideal size of the salt. I have read a lot of ...
765 views

### Which block cipher modes of operation allow a predictable IV?

Recently I found out that in the modes CBC and PCBC the IV may be passed in cleartext but never must be predictable. However for this part of my app I rather have the IV be predictable and unique (i.e....
808 views

### Recommended way of adding a pepper/secret key to password before hashing?

There have been several questions regarding password hashing here and on Security.SE. A "pepper" is sometimes mentioned – an application-specific secret key. The canonical answer on password hashing ...
5k views

### Why is HMAC-SHA1 still considered secure?

This Q & A http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/33123/hotp-with-as-hmac-hashing-algoritme-a-hash-from-the-sha-2-family says that the security of HMAC-SHA1 does not depend on resistance to ...
649 views

### Does the XML Encryption flaw affect SSL/TLS?

A "practical attack against XML's cipher block chaining (CBC) mode" has been demonstrated: XML Encryption Flaw Leaves Web Services Vulnerable. Does this weakness of CBC-mode which is used here also ...
450 views

### Where does the $\varphi(n)$ part of RSA come from?

$e d \equiv 1 \pmod{\varphi(n)}$ Where does the $\varphi(n)$ part come from? How did the inventors of RSA arrive at $\varphi(n)$?
188 views

### When all shares of a secret are given to adversary as a permuted matrix

Suppose we have a secret $\sigma$. The secret comes from a universe in which the elements are not necessarily distributed uniformly. We split $\sigma$ into $n$ shares $[\sigma_1,...,\sigma_n]$ (...
657 views

### GCM encryption for 256-bit and 512-bit block ciphers

The Galois/Counter Mode of Operation (GCM) This paper describe using GCM mode with 128-bit and 64-bit block cipher. Can we use this mode for 256-bit and 512-bit block cipher?
143 views

### Statistical saturation attack on block ciphers

I was wondering if anyone around here could give me some explanation on this type of attacks. Pretty much the only thing that I could find is A Statistical Saturation Attack against the Block Cipher ...
2k views

### Are there any standards of multi-prime RSA key generation?

FIPS 186-3 specifies a method to generate DSA parameters. Is there anything similar (official standard or widely-accepted recommendation) that shows how to generate the primes for multi-prime RSA?
647 views

### Combining several symmetric ciphers using XOR

I have seen a talk by Rüdiger Weis, where he says that you can combine two symmetric ciphers using XOR. According to him, that has the effect that its sufficient if only one of the ciphers is secure. ...
960 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 ...
570 views

### Is it possible to tweak AES-GCM so that it is satisfactory for whole-disk encryption (like XTS mode)?

Is it possible to leverage a preexisting implementation of AES-GCM to provide the key security benefits essential for full-disk encryption (similar to AES-XTS)? GCM is a popular encryption mode ...
325 views

### ECC - ElGamal with Montgomery or Edwards type curves (curve25519, ed25519) - possible?

I know the usual way of using getting shared secrets for encryption with ECC is DH, however, this only works with two keypairs of exactly the same kind, for example two curve25519- or two p256-...
1k views

### Meet-in-the-middle with checking complexity

In regards to meet in the middle type attacks, I have been considering the amount of operations in order to successfully find a key given two sets of plaintext / ciphertext pairs. All of the sources I ...
459 views

### Should HMAC or NMAC or plain Keccak be used for a secure MAC?

After some digging around in the HMAC spec I found this (paraphrased): Step 1: If the length of Key equals the block size of the hash function (512 bits/64 Bytes for SHA-256), set the key equal ...
865 views

### Is a PBKDF2-derived master key easier cracked if very many Data Protection Keys are derived from it?

I'm referring the NIST document about PBKDF2, NIST Special Publication 800-132, Recommendation for Password-Based Key Derivation, Part 1: Storage Applications, Page 8 and 9, section 5.4 Using the ...
190 views

### iterated discrete log problem

Consider the following problem: given $g_1 \ldots g_i,h_1 \ldots h_i \in G$, $\forall i$ find $x_i$ such that $g_i^{x_i}=h_i$ For $i=1$ this is the discrete log problem and is assumed to to have ...
422 views

### How to roll my own hardware RNG?

I am considering building a hardware RNG myself using cheap parts. Is this a good idea and safe enough? Random sources: amplified Zener noise from one randomly chosen ...
548 views

### Convert m-Sequence into a de Bruijn Sequence

In his paper Alternating Step Generator Controlled by de Bruijn Sequence, C.G. Günther states on page three that a de Bruijn sequence (..) can easily be obtained from an m-sequence (maximal length ...
120 views

### A “one time pad” can be thought of a Vigenere cipher with

A "One Time Pad" can be thought of a Vigenere cipher with... An infinitely long key A secure symmetric key Multiple ciphertext alphabets A columnar transposition I had this question come up ...
381 views

### Which characters to take into account when calculating unicity distance?

I need to calculate the unicity distance of a block cipher. Assuming I know that the plaintext is an English message I considered using 53 as the size of the alphabet, since the message could contain ...
443 views

### what is the difference between IBE and ABE schemes

Can somebody explain in simple words. real life example light help and limitations of these schemes etc.
309 views

### Is AES-256 over AES-128 weakening the original encryption?

When transfering data using TLS the browser and server agree the cipher suite to be used - so for example this could be chosen as AES-128 and is (probably) outside of my control. If I separately ...
748 views

### How can an encryption scheme be indistinguishable with multiple messages but vulnerable to an adaptive chosen-plaintext attack?

In order to be indistinguishable with respect to multiple messages, wouldn't the scheme need to be nondeterministic? How would this then possibly be vulnerable to an adaptive CPA?
306 views

### ECC partially blind signature scheme verification

Continued from Is there a flaw in this ECC blind signature scheme? The problem I needed a partially blind signature scheme for one of my projects, but couldn't find one on the internet, so I've made ...
147 views

I'm writing a client application that wants to store some secret information with a storage service. The client has to authenticate the user with the service and the service should not be able to ...
75 views

### On composition of encryption schemes

If we composed (as in function composition) multiple CPA-secure encryption schemes would the result also be CPA-secure?
411 views

### IV Security Clarification

After doing lots of reading on SO and other websites relating to AES cryptography, I am trying to understand the security issues surrounding IV's. There seems to be a lot of confusion and ...
263 views

### Is it safe to encrypt random data using ECB mode?

If I have 48 random bytes, is it safe to encrypt them using ECB mode? Or is there still a good reason to use another mode like CTR, CBC, etc.? Context is this: I am creating something like a TLS ...
207 views

### Is this variant of SRP for peer-to-peer authentication practical?

I'm interested in using a modified form of SRP as a peer-to-peer authentication method. Since neither side is acting as a host, one of the primary design goals for SRP (that the client doesn't need ...
122 views

### Efficient Robust Private Set Intersection Questions

I am trying to implement Efficient Robust Private Set Intersection using additive ElGamal. I am trying to run the full protocol mentioned in Section 3.4 on the following inputs: $p = 17$ (prime) \$g ...
6k views

### How do I derive the time complexity of encryption and decryption based on modular arithmetic?

I want to calculate the time complexity of two encryption and decryption algorithms. The first one (RSA-like) has the encryption $$C := M^e \bmod N$$ and decryption $$M_P := C^d \bmod N.$$ ...
130 views

### How is an epsilon of 1/1000 non-negligible?

Lately I've been studying cryptography and in the current course I'm taking we're reviewing statistical tests and how they can be used to determine if a pseudo-random generator is secure or not. ...
In the first step of key generation phase in Paillier cryptosystem given here. It's given that $$\operatorname{length}(p) = \operatorname{length}(q) ) \implies \operatorname{gcd}(pq,(p-1)(q-1))=1$$ ...