# All Questions

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### What's the strategy for future directions in cryptography? Bigger numbers/faster searching, or new methods, say, of factoring?

I'm taking a course in cryptography, and I would value any comments. This is not too technical a question, but more about directions or strategy in cryptography. My question is, is public key ...
2k views

### Why do block ciphers need a non-linear component (like an S-box)?

Why is there a requirement of "Non-Linear functions" as a component of many popular block ciphers (e.g. the S-box in DES or 3DES)? How does it make the cipher more secure? The only intuition I have ...
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### DES key expansion: why are these two descriptions different?

I would like someone to explain me how to generate DES subkeys, because in the documentation that I saw, sometimes they say: "We rotate the initial key according to the number of iterations given ...
2k views

### Should I salt an AES password at each encryption?

I saw a sample code where the same password is salted with a different value (using PBKDF2) for each encryption. That means that the salt must be stored for each encrypted message. I don't understand ...
448 views

### Determining the algorithm used to generate a digital signature

I have a string "abcd pqrs". This string is digitally signed with an X.509 certificate (with its private key) and it produces a signature. From the signed string, is it possible to find out what ...
2k views

### Difference between symmetric and asymmetric hash function?

The Linux kernel supports symmetric and asymmetric hash functions. E.g. sha1, sha256, ... See tcrypt.c and search for test_hash_speed and ...
278 views

### Choosing good parameter for Lenstra's elliptic curve factorization

In Wikipedia, there is an article explaining Lenstra's factorization algorithm. As far as I got it, we choose some $e \in \mathbb{N}$ and a point $P$ on the curve and then calculate $eP$. While ...
145 views

### Public keys and their protocols

I'm having difficulties understanding exactly what this protocol means: $S \to D : \{N_S , S\}K_D$ $D \to S : \{N_S , N_D \}K_S$ $S \to D : \{N_D \}K_D$ "where $S$ represents the supervisor’s ...
187 views

### Future-Proof Versioning and Validation

I am working on a library (using standard primitives: AES256 CTR; HMAC with SHA256; PBKDF2 with SHA256, 128 bit salt, and 10000 rounds) to encrypt and decrypt data, given a password. The encrypted ...
9k views

### How to use RCON In Key Expansion of 128 Bit Advanced Encryption Standard

I have a question about RCON here is my illustration... this is the 128 bit key.. ...
167 views

### What are the cryptographic assumptions in the Dolev Yao model?

In the Dolev Yao model for interactive protocols, the cryptographic primitive (encryption, for example) is considered as a blackbox. Does blackbox here mean that the primitive is to be considered CPA ...
278 views

### Can Add and Multiply On Cipher Text achieve all operations?

A Fully homomorphic encryption scheme needs to support an evaluate function that can do add and multiply operations on cipher text. Can we do all kinds of complex operations on cipher text like ...
541 views

### Blind quantum computing and fully homomorphic encryption

I am somewhat familiar with current research on fully homomorphic enryption schemes and their possible application to Cloud computing. I've just noticed (somewhat late) that a marketing-savvy group ...
19k views

### Best way to reduce chance of hash collisions: Multiple hashes, or larger hash?

I would like to maintain a list of unique data blocks (up to 1MiB in size), using the SHA-256 hash of the block as the key in the index. Obviously there is a chance of hash collisions, so what is the ...
177 views

### Security model for privacy-preserving aggregation scheme.

Suppose that $S=(E,D)$ is an additively homomorphic encryption scheme. Now I want to design a protocol $P$ such that given inputs $x_1,x_2,..,x_n$, the adversary $A$ (who can decrypt) can only learn ...
2k views

### AES-GCM and its IV/nonce value

I was reading about the differences between the GCM and the CBC more here and I have a follow up doubt on the same. In the CBC mode the person who performs the encryption is the one who provides the ...
3k views

### Why is it important that phi(n) is kept a secret, in RSA?

Why is it important that $\phi(n)$ is kept a secret, in RSA?
169 views

### What would the Internet be like without public-key cryptography?

The functioning of the Internet as we know it nowadays depends very heavily on public-key cryptography, including several key root systems that depend on its asymmetric properties. But what would it ...
777 views

### True 128bit secured password length?

assume we say 128bit keys are secure so a 16 character long password is safe, but if i even use lower case and upper case letters with numbers and special characters on my keyboard its about 80 ...
113 views

### AES 128bit round level recommendation

we don't want change standard just after every attack, now for AES 128bit blocks i think 16 round is secure, but what is best round amount ? we had attack for 7 round then 10 round and it going so on ...
1k views

### Why the following attack in common modulus RSA works?

Suppose that i share a common modulus $N$ with two users $u_1$ and $u_2$ with public, secret keys ($e_a,d_a$), ($e_b,d_b$). Why then $gcd(V,e_b)=1$ where $V=d_a*e_a-1/$W and $W=gcd(e_b,d_a*e_a-1)$ ...
176 views

### Does zero-padding the secret in Shamir's sharing scheme increase security?

When performed in binary Galois fields $GF_{2^n}$, Shamir's threshold secret sharing scheme produces shares that are each the same bit-size as the secret. Though the scheme is "perfectly secure" in ...
2k views

### Double Encrypting with two different keys

In terms of security, would it be MORE or LESS secure to take, say, an RC4 output (or Serpent) or other, that is encrypted with one key, and to encrypt that output with AES (using a different key)? ...
147 views

### What is an easy method of proving that a cryptographic oracle attack is possible?

Lets say an application is using CBC mode without authentication. The application is generating cipher text. This cipher text can be manipulated by the attacker and then transmitted back to the ...
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### Is there a big RSA Data Set

Is there a big dataset containing RSA public $(n,e)$ and private keys $d$ and primes $p,q$ where $n = p.q$ ?
3k views

### Galois fields in cryptography

I don't really understand Galois fields, but I've noticed they're used a lot in crypto. I tried to read into them, but quickly got lost in the mess of heiroglyphs and alien terms. I understand they're ...
1k views

### Necessity for finite field arithmetic and the prime number p in Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme

Shamir's original paper (PDF, 197kb) describing a threshold secret sharing scheme states: To make this claim more precise, we use modular arithmetic instead of real arithmetic. The set of ...
426 views

### How do unkeyed hash functions (for MDCs) provide security?

Unkeyed hash functions are, by definition, hash functions computed without a key. SHA-1 is an example. MDCs (message digest codes) are a subclass of unkeyed hash functions. How are unkeyed hash ...