# All Questions

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### Privacy-Preserving relational databases: checking the existence of a record (or multiple records)

I would like to know if there exists a protocol which performs the following operation in a privacy-preserving fashion: User $U$ wants to know whether a record is stored in the database. The primary ...
155 views

### Base64 for a hash algorithm [closed]

May be a silly question, but I am really curious. If a hash algorithm uses Base64 in the process of hashing a string for example, it is still considered a hash algorithm, even though it uses an ...
73 views

### Cracking an appliance's network protocol

I'm trying to crack my thermostat's network protocol. I've captured several rounds of network traffic and here is what I've got to work with. Communicating via HTTP POST The POST data is JSON ...
175 views

### Hill Cipher question

Recently, I was given three ciphers to crack for my cryptography class. At this point, I have guessed that one of them is likely a Hill cipher (probably 3x3, as that is the most complex we have done ...
174 views

### Can Bitcoin HD public keys be used for symmetric encryption?

I asked this at bitcoin.stackexchange.com first, but it seems that this is more of a crypto-question anyway. I'm interested in using a Hierarchical Deterministic Bitcoin wallet branch as a "shared ...
496 views

### Shared secret: Generating Random Permutation

-- or: How to Play Poker Without a Dealer I know this question is long but it's a really interesting theoretical problem about shared secrets and multi-party computation. General Problem: "Shared ...
340 views

### Is it possible to generate a secure permutation F over 32-bit integers even if F(0) … F(n) is public knowledge?

I'm currently interested in the problem of generating random-looking URLs from sequential database IDs, like how they do it in link shorteners. One way to do this is to encrypt the sequential database ...
2k views

### Change Salt when Changing Password?

Assume a password storage scheme using a computationally-expensive hash algorithm and a CSPRNG salt. User ID, salt, and hash value are stored in a table; if the table is compromised, all three ...
1k views

### Using SHA-256 with different initial hash value

FIPS 180-3 defines the initial hash value for SHA-256 as the first 32 bits of the fractional parts of the square roots of the first 8 primes 2..19. What would be the risks of using a different value ...
657 views

### Is there some way to generate a non-predictable random number in a decentralised network?

Is there a way to generate a random number with given restrictions: It will be used in a decentralised network with a big number of peers (no central authority to generate it) Its generation should ...
601 views

### Storage of Private Keys

I'm building a bitcoin web application that will require all users to be assigned a wallet for adding funds to their account. I plan on exposing the public key to the user (the bitcoin address). Users ...
321 views

### Can Secp 256 K1 curves “map” to a value on FIPS 186-3 or P-256?

I'm looking at Secp 256K1 vs UProve's FIPS 186-3 or P-256 implementation. Is there any relationship between the curves such that I can consistently "map" or "project" values from one curve to ...
4k views

### How can I calculate the SHA-256 “midstate”?

Recently I've been trying to implement some Bitcoin-related code, and I've stumbled upon a weird concept, a SHA-256 "midstate". Some explanation is given here. The general concept is that Bitcoin ...
320 views

### Can $r$ and $s$ from an ECDSA signature be negative numbers?

I have an ECDSA implementation in Mathematica over secp256k1 and $r$ and $s$ are always positive numbers. But if you encode them as bytes, the most significant byte can be over ...
665 views

### Families of public/private keys in elliptic curve cryptography

I'm looking for a related key scheme for elliptic curve cryptography. The basic idea would be that there would be a master public key and a master private key. From the master public key, you could ...
682 views

### Bitcoin Research

I have recently been assigned to advise a student on a senior thesis in math. She has taken linear algebra, introductory real analysis, basic cryptography, and abstract algebra. Her interest is in ...
117 views

### Timestamping using a hashed linked list and public known events

Let's say we have a timestamping scheme of the following characteristics, The hashes of the documents we are trying to timestamp are XOR'ed with "events" whose time of occurrence are very publicly ...
159 views

### Burn after read algorythm. Software verification on compromised environment. Software smart card

Please help me pick right design of software… I have to design client-server software, where the server should verify that the client runs software from specific source code. It has to be verifiable ...
82 views

### Is using SHA256 to extract entropy from a p-rand nonce a good way to create keying material?

Using $SHA256(N)$, where $N$ is 64 bytes of output from the Microsoft Windows CryptGenRandom function. Are there any known vulnerabilities with using this method to ...
230 views

### Would xoring 2 independant AES CTRs to produce p-rand introduce vulnerabilities?

Assuming $$AES_{k_1}(C_1) \oplus AES_{k_2}(C_2)$$ where AES is used in CTR mode, $C$ is a 128 bit incrementing counter, keys and counters for both transforms are random as well as unique, and the ...
181 views

### Proof for composed signatures

Assumes that we have 3 signature algorithms, $S^A$ with key pair $(sk^A,pk^A)$, $S^B$ with key pair $(sk^B,pk^B)$,$S^C$ with key pair $(sk^C,pk^C)$. We denote by $\epsilon$, $\epsilon'$ and ...
60 views

### ECIES: Purpose of optional shared information?

According to Wikipedia the ECIES algorithm has two optional shared information $S_1$ and $S_2$. They are used as follows: Generate a random shared secret $Z$ according to ECIES, which will never be ...
133 views

### ECIES: Purpose of MAC?

Assumptions: $A$ wants to communicate with $B$ $A$ knows a public key $P_B$ which is trusted by a third party and belongs to $B$ $A$ knows the address of someone who pretends to be $B$ $A$ wants ...
249 views

### Encryption-Decryption-Encryption

I have learned from Applied Cryptography that triple encryption with three independent keys in encryption-decryption-encryption (EDE) process gives security not higher then $2^{2n}$ when it comes to ...
868 views

### Entropy of the key

Suppose a $1000$-bit key used in the one-time pad is not randomly and uniformly generated. Suppose that the values of the first $5$ bits are $0$, and the other $995$ bits are randomly generated and ...
92 views

### Statistical tests for pseudorandom permutations

I'm implementing a format-preserving encryption scheme similar to those described in the literature. I want to sanity test my PRP using some statistical tests like TestU01. However, I'm not sure how ...
1k views

### How is HMAC hashed message decrypted on the receiver side

We know that MAC algorithm and key are used in both sender and receiver side to get the matching MAC tages to prove that the data is authentic. Now in HMAC we know that, it makes use of crytographic ...
499 views

### AES-ECB as an authentication mechanism

ECB is considered to be insecure when used for confidentiality because identical plaintext result with identical ciphertext. But what if we use ECB for authentication? Assume A wants to transmit an ...
156 views

### Complexity of verifying OTP secret

What is the minimum number of unique pairs of digests and inputs to a one-time pass needed to verify that a secret is equal to a ...
80 views

### Advantages of using intermediate hash over full hash in digital signature application

Description of intermediate hashes Intermediate (or partial) hashes are canonical forms of digest state that can be transferred from one hash implementation to another, so that the other, limited ...
532 views

### How many bits of hash are realistically needed for key verification?

Say I'm connecting to a web server secured with TLS but with a self-signed certificate. Accordingly, I call the owners of the server and ask them what SHA1 fingerprint they have. They start reading ...
441 views

### What is the exact purpose of length padding in Merkle–Damgård hash functions? [duplicate]

Is a length padding technique in a hash function used to avoid length extension attacks ?
456 views

### Are SSL/TLS used for maintaining data confidentiality?

In SSL/TLS, we use symmetric and asymmetric keys to encrypt the data. Does that mean that the keys are used to encrypt the data (preserve the integrity) or provide a secure channel for the data to be ...
94 views

### What does Set Membership actually prove?

While going through this paper, I came across the idea of Set Membership proofs. The proof allows a prover to prove that a value is contained in some set. The point where I am confused is, all the ...
109 views

### OCB and GCM security

Is OCB as secure as GCM or CCM ? Since OCB design is quite different from GCM and CCM, I was wondering if the security properties of these latters are satisfied by OCB, as well. Thank you.
201 views

### How is the following different than RSA Signing of a document?

If the goal is to demonstrate that you are who you say you are, I think the following will work: Bob wants to know that you are Amy. Bob encrypts a number using Amy's public key and then asks her what ...
72 views

### Is MAC algorithm same at both sender and receiver end

The MAC algortihm which is used along with a secret key to generate a MAC tag on the sender end ,is it same at the receiver end also who again uses a MAC algorithm to generate a tag? If yes, then how ...
60 views

### How to make a document truly read only

How is it possibile to cryptographically make a document truly read only? As in read only I imply that the user can obviously view it which can be achieved by coding which pixels have which colors. ...
8k views

### Can Pre-Paid Cards be cracked?

Is it possible to deduce the original function that used to generate those prepaid cards number that are used for charging your mobile phone credits? For example: If I've collected about 1000 of ...
208 views

### Repeatable crypto

Is there a safe way to do crypto that will always produce the same result for a given input? My use case is transferring deltas of huge files, to a backup server. The backup server has no knowledge ...
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### FSB Hash Functions and Convetional hash Functions

I'm reading FSB cryptographic hash function and the authors say that security of this function depends on NP-Complete Problem: "Decoding Linear Code Unlike most other cryptographic hash functions in ...
168 views

### SIMONs Cryptoanalysis

I'm reading Cryptanalysis of the SIMON Family of Block Ciphers. In Section 3.1, it says: For SIMON, consider an n-bit input difference $\alpha= x\oplus x'$ to $F$ of Hamming weight one. As the ...
3k views

### Is SHA related to AES or TLS in any way

I have been reading about SHA-2 family and I found a lot of in depth details, but I am confused about how it is related to TLS and AES. TLS encrypts data between server and client, but does it make ...
193 views

### Is multiple encryption using NaCL and TLS better?

In general, the idea of multiple encryption sounds interesting - for creating stronger cyphers (especially against implementation bugs), one could always get the configuration details wrong and mess ...
301 views

### Prevent MITM attack while encrypting data by using ElGamal ECC?

I am using ElGamal ECC to encrypt my plain text data. I want to ensure that my data is safe from a Man-In-The-Middle attack. What methodology I can adopt to achieve this goal? How can we prevent a ...
185 views

### CBC-MAC based on PRF

Why is the block cipher in the CBC-MAC taken to be a pseudo random permutation (PRP) and not a pseudo random function (PRF)? We don't need the bijective property of the PRP. So why go with it?
142 views

### Should layered use of crypto always have a cryptographic binding between the layers?

Reading the latest TLS weakness, it seems that multiple weaknesses have been found over the years caused by not ensuring that messages are sent over the same channel, and in general a lack of ...
Assume: We have a centralized data store that can store whatever we need Every user is online Function $f : File \to Key$ gets access to the store, and is the same for all users. $g : Key \to File$ ...